


The Sovereign Light Cafe

by Lapsang



Series: Spiralling [1]
Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: (But it is not all fluff), A lot of talking about feelings, Alternate Universe - Earth, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slow Burn, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsang/pseuds/Lapsang
Summary: When Dave Lister moves into a little house on a hill in Hastings, he doesn't realise exactly how much his neurotic new housemate is going to screw up his life - for better or worse.Modern day AU fic based off the song of the same name by Keane.
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Series: Spiralling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009116
Comments: 54
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Keane song of the same name, because sometimes I think in music videos, and sometimes I think in full blown fic ideas. Properly domestic Rimmer & Lister in a shitty houseshare in a town by the sea was a concept that moved into my head and wouldn't leave, and here we are. Also inspired by The Repair Shop by HungLikeARainbro, which similarly made me pine for small town English life and these guys living together (and it's great and you should go read it!!)
> 
> Apologies to Hastings, a town I have been to once. I intend to return, because I won a coupon for free game of mini golf, and damnit I will cash in someday.

Lister wasn’t expecting much when he rocked up to the tiny terrace house on the top of the hill, looking for all the world like it’d been squeezed in between two proper houses as an afterthought. Knowing British building standards, that was exactly what had happened.

Still, he needed a place to stay, it had a room going, and that room was cheap. After a string of disastrous viewings, he was fed up and just about ready to take anything vaguely dry with enough room to lie down in.

The landlady opened the door before he could knock, fist raised hesitantly in midair.

“David, isn’t it? Yes, yes, come in. Take a look around.” She had a querulous voice and nervous air about her, peering over his shoulder, beckoning him in. With her lime-green cardigan and little round yellow-rimmed spectacles, she reminded him curiously of a budgie; a budgie anxious to show him the house as quickly as possible.

It was fine, really; clean, orderly, didn’t smell, no obvious mould. Honestly, compared to the dumps he’d seen, it was a palace. A tiny, cramped palace put together by someone with an over-fondness for beige paisley wallpaper, but a palace nonetheless.

There were three floors - ground floor was shared, first floor was his room and the bathroom, second floor belonged to the other renter. His room was nothing special - bed, wardrobe, desk, kind of dark, walls marked by scores of blu-tack stains from the posters of inhabitants past. The bathroom was also fairly ordinary; cramped, sure, but containing all the necessary things a bathroom should have - bath with showerhead, horrible plastic shower curtain, toilet, sink, mirror cupboard, done. Kitchen seemed alright too, with just about enough room to swing a cat, and impeccably matching crockery in ocean (or military?) grey, stacked neatly in the drying rack.

The best thing was that there was an actual shared living room off the kitchen, complete with a small brown couch with the cushions just-so. Interesting selection of literature in the shelf under the tiny TV - “Fascists of the 19th Century”, “Advanced Morris Dancing: The Bells And Whistles”, “How To Pick Up Girls By Hypnosis”... 

“So, will you take it?” The landlady interrupted his browsing, smiling sweetly down at him.

“This is a sharer, right? Where’s the other guy?” Lister replied, straightening up from his crouched position next to the shelf.

“Oh, Arnold?” She squeaked, her voice rising abruptly in pitch. “He’s out at the moment, I’m afraid, but you don’t really need to meet him first, do you? It’s a nice place, yes? He’s very… tidy, as you can see.” The smile, fixed in place, wavered.

There was definitely something up, something behind her hurried insistence to get an answer out of him, something causing her to avoid meeting his eyes and instead glance at the front door as if afraid someone would come through it at any moment.

But, sod it, he was tired and just wanted this over with, and the house was nice enough. The other guy can’t be that bad, right? And hey, Dave Lister’s a chill kind of guy, he can get along with anyone.

At least, that was what he thought before he agreed to move in with Arnold Rimmer.

  


He turned up at 6:07pm the following Monday in the middle of a horrible rainstorm, clutching his battered backpack to his chest with one arm in a futile attempt to keep it (and all his worldly possessions) sheltered in his ratty raincoat. In his other hand was his guitar, snug in a case that’d become more patchwork than his gran’s attempts at quilting, which he delicately set down and balanced against his hip while he rang the doorbell.

Lister buzzed once, twice, but, not hearing the answering chime from within, resorted to pounding on the door.

There was no response. The lights were definitely on, and he could even hear faint strains of… Organ music?

He waited maybe a minute, getting wetter by the second, and was considering thumping on the door again when he heard the tap-tap of deliberately slow slippered steps from within.

The door, on a chain, opened a crack.

“Who’s calling, please?” Enquired a nasally voice in clipped tones from within, one hazel eye visible through the sliver between door and doorframe.

“Dave, Dave Lister, I’m moving in?” 

“You’re late. We said 6pm.”

“It’s barely past, man, bus ran late. Let me in and we can chat about my timekeeping inside, yeah? It’s pissing it down out ‘ere.”

“...Do you have ID?”

“Is this a joke?”

“Do. You. Have. ID?”

“Smeg’s sake, c’mon, you know I’m Dave Lister and I’m moving in! Now open the bleedin’ door!”

The man paused, then, with a haughty sniff, closed the door. Lister was heavily weighing up the pros and cons of just bashing the thing in when he caught the ‘click’ of the chain being released, and the door opened.

He barged in, desperate to be in the dry, accidentally brushing into his new housemate who was not quite quick enough to step out of the way. Said housemate let out an exaggerated gasp of horror and pulled his garishly pink nightgown closer to himself.

“This is Peruvian Silk! Completely ruined by water damage!”

Lister, dripping water from every inch of his scrawny frame, could only gawp at him.

“Well, it could be Peruvian,” Arnold continued defensively, twisting round and dabbing at it. “Maybe I got it from the Oxfam by the pier but it feels like Peruvian silk, and I’ve always had an eye for these things.”

Lister stared at him, stared at the very un-Peruvian manufacturer’s label sticking up from the back of the collar, and it began to dawn on him that perhaps his new housemate was a couple of spices short of a curry. He starts mentally calculating how soon he can break the contract, just in case.

Both of them considered it a fairly disastrous first impression, and it didn’t get much better from there. Arnold whinged incessantly about him dripping on the carpets, insisted he left his boots by the door then complained about the state of his socks (to be fair, he could’ve done with changing them about a week ago, but that would have required having another pair to change into).

He prattled on about not scuffing the staircase the entire journey up the narrow staircase to drop his things in his tiny cupboard of a room, yapped on about the hours he’ll be permitted to practice his guitar as he propped it lovingly in a corner (said hours amounted to about 5 minutes every other Saturday, but Lister has no intention of listening to him about that, or about much at all), dictated where he is to put his toiletries in the bathroom, and generally attempted to specify every minute little thing about living and breathing in his presence.

It’s when Lister went to the kitchen to make himself a much needed mug of tea that he snapped.

“You can’t use that. It’s my mug.” Rimmer squawked as Lister picked one up from the drying rack. It’s the least boring mug he can see in Rimmer’s collection, which is light-grey and declares ‘GIVE QUICHE A CHANCE!’ in dull red letters that don’t quite contrast enough to be easily readable, which is probably for the best.

“Come on, man, I haven’t had a chance to buy crockery yet. I’ll wash it up,” Lister replied, setting it down and going ahead and filling the kettle.

“With what? My sponge and dish soap? Think again, miladdo.”

“Oh, you’d rather I just left it, eh?” Lister raised an eyebrow at him, set the kettle down and flicked the switch on to boil.

“No, I’d rather you thought ahead and procured your own supplies. I bet you were going to pinch one of my teabags too, weren’t you?” Arnold crossed his arms over his chest self-righteously

“I was hoping you’d give me one, yeah,” Lister said, hand hovering over the box.

“Not a chance. I work hard so I can buy things, and I don’t just go handing them out willy-nilly to any Tom, Dick or David that happens to want one.”

“They cost about 3p, Arnold!”

“Don’t call me _Arnold_. You sound like my mother.”

“Then what?”

“Use my surname: Rimmer. I want some professional respect in this household.”

Lister, not having known his new housemate’s surname yet, had to suppress a snigger. It very much does not work, and is very much the wrong move, Rimmer’s nostrils flaring in indignance when faced with a reaction he must’ve had a million times before. Lister fancied he could hear the whistling of steam coming out of his ears from rage, but then realised it was just the kettle boiling.

“OK, Rimmer,” continued Dave, as straight-faced as he could manage, “I was hoping as professionals with mutual respect for each other that also have to live with each other without being driven to murder, that maybe you could spare me a teabag as a welcome gift.”

Rimmer weighed it up.

“Fine,” he repented, “But don’t touch the milk or sugar. And this boil of the kettle comes out of your portion of the electricity bill.”

Lister rolled his eyes as hard as he could, took the teabag and poured over the hot water to stew.

He was idly stirring his brew when he noticed Rimmer was looking at him expectantly.

“...What?”

“Aren’t you going to ask if I want one?”

Not for the first time that evening, Lister considered if murdering Arnold Rimmer would be considered justifiable self-defence.


	2. Chapter 2

Living with Arnold Rimmer is hell. 

It’s only been a week and he tried, he really tried, got his own mugs and supplies and everything. ‘Dave Lister’ and ‘tidy’ are not normally concepts you’d associate together, but he does make somewhat of an effort to put things in the bin and wipe up spills and not leave everything everywhere, in the misguided belief that maybe if Rimmer saw he was trying he might lay off a bit. Sure, Lister’s idea of ‘tidy’ was more or less ‘you can see most of the floor/surface and you don’t have to physically clamp your nose shut to survive the smell’ but hey, it was still better than the alternative.

However, Rimmer’s expectations of cohabitation were variously inconsistent, incomprehensible and impossible, and mostly insane. Lister’s efforts, meagre as they might have been, were never going to live up to whatever utopian standard the asylum escapee he was living with had in his head.

He wouldn’t have a problem keeping the peace by sticking to a couple of rules here and there, but there were so many, and worst of all Rimmer had numbered them and designed them ‘shared cohabitation directives’ and enjoyed quoting them at him from a notebook the approximate size and thickness of a phone book that he kept on top of the fridge. Lister has half a mind to memorise the thing and start quoting them back at him out of spite, but he’d need to be some kind of robot to do that. He half suspected the notebook was in fact a phone book and Rimmer was spouting bullshit, but he didn’t want to check, because he wasn’t sure if his flatmate lying about his book of rules or having actually handwritten them out was a more positive assessment of his sanity. 

Typically, their spats are related to something that would never cross the mind of a more reasonable man, but Arnold Rimmer was not a reasonable man.

One Thursday evening, just before bed, Lister washed one of his personal mugs with his personal soap and personal sponge and set it down in the drying rack. It took approximately ten seconds for Rimmer to appear by his elbow and sanctimoniously quote another dubious directive at him.

“S.C. Directive Number 24552 - cohabitants shall not pollute one another’s dining utensils.”

“With what, Rimmer, how am I polluting your utensils?” Lister exclaimed, gesturing at the (relatively, for a grotty house share) clean and sparkling sink.

“Your mug’s touching mine.”

“It’s in the drying rack, Rimmer, it’s clean?”

“Not clean by my standards, not with my soap. I’m going to have to wash it all over again.” Rimmer lamented, swooping in to scoop up his poor maligned mug and scrub it furiously.

“We use the same soap, Rimmer!”

“No we don’t! Mine is yellow. Much cleaner colour, much superior to the green stuff you use.”

“You used to use green. You only started using yellow after I bought more green when you insisted we needed different soaps.”

“Yes, well, it came to my attention that yellow is actually scientifically superior and thus I should use it, as the original and thus superior inhabitant.”

“It was on sale, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe in an attempt to get people to switch to the superior formula, instead of sticking with the luddite’s green.” Rimmer conceded, setting down his newly-cleaned mug a safe and proper distance away from Lister’s green-cleaned biohazard.

After that, Lister took every chance he could to leave tiny specks of inferior green washing up liquid smeared on the bottom of Rimmer’s crockery. Sure, it used slightly more soap, but… it was worth it.

At first, Lister tried to avoid spending as much time at the house as possible. He went out with his mates from the supermarket where he has a job pushing trolleys around, and he went on dates with anyone who’d give him a chance, and he’d waste time at the Palace Arcade filling those coin pushers with loose change in the futile hope they’d push more out than he pushed in.

The dates were by far the most fun of these activities, though he never managed to keep up a relationship for long. This was not helped by the general expectation that after a couple of goes, they should end up at his, and going back to his inevitably meant trying to sneak round Rimmer, who had absolutely no sense of boundaries.

The first time he’d bought back a girl - Debs, a fellow Scouser who reminded him chiefly of home but also eerily of himself - Rimmer had been sitting on the couch, ensconced in his dressing gown, nose deep in a too-thick book about Telegraph Poles. He’d peered up from his tome, performed the most exaggerated double-take Lister had ever seen in his life, and immediately risen to his feet, scandalised.

“Lister! That’s… You’ve brought a woman!” Rimmer was actually trembling in a shock, pointing an accusatory finger at the pair.

“He has, yeah,” Grinned Debs, leaning nonchalantly on the wall as she followed Lister’s lead and peeled off her boots, and, smeg, Lister loved her attitude.

They’d escaped upstairs and had the most annoyingly loud and boisterous sex they could out of spite, but things somewhat soured in the morning when they traipsed downstairs and Debs tried to leave, but found each boot filled with cold and lumpy custard. They’d emptied said custard onto Rimmer’s book of Twentieth Century Telegraph Poles, naturally, but it still somewhat ruined things.

Lister didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks, then ran into her by chance at The Clown, a small local hole-in-the-wall kind of pub. He’d gone up to her and said hello, and enquired about a round two.

“Truth be told, Dave, you’re fun, and I get it, my roommate’s right difficult as well,” Debs admitted, somewhat bashfully, “But if we’ve both got difficult roommates, where the hell are we gonna shag?”

“I dunno, I’ve always been curious about the great outdoors?” Lister smiled and attempted to laugh it off, but it was over and he knew it. They’d parted ways amicably and Lister resumed the eternal search for love and affection, more for something to do than anything else.

Rimmer continued to pull something like this every single time Lister brought a girl (or the more occasional guy) back for some adult fun. Lister has thought he might be a bit about him banging guys, too, given how traditionally inclined he was, but he seemed no more or less determined in his efforts.

Credit where credit was due, the man was inventive in his interventions. He played abominably loud organ music, got dressed up and Morris danced outside, read whole chapters of the Bible in various strange voices, and stretched the shower hose to Lister’s door and sprayed it under the gap so everything and everyone in his room got lightly doused, which had rather put a damper on his evening.

After every occurrence, Lister would thunder down the stairs after his hastily disappearing date to confront Rimmer, who’d generally be sitting on the sofa, legs crossed demurely, pretending to read innocently like he hadn’t just fucked up his fucking once again, and they’d have a row blazing enough to set forests alight.

Said argument usually went something like:

“Smeg, Rimmer, why can’t you just be fucking normal? What is your smeggin’ problem?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lister. I’ve just been sitting here, reading -” (At this point, Rimmer would try and discreetly check the title of his book, which half the time was upside down) “- ‘Soups Of The World’, a fascinating, fascinating -”

“Oh, shut up! You’ve read about as much of that as I’ve read… Anything, really.”

“Yes, and it shows, you ingrate.”

“Ey, at least I was running my hands down a much nicer kinda spine earlier - was, until a certain smeghead smegged it up, again!”

“Well maybe you should consider that this is a shared household, and you should have a certain amount of tact and decorum-”

“I didn’t even get to the bit where we lost our decorum, Rimmer! You wouldn’t let me!”

“Call it preemptive measures, then.”

“Call it you being pettier than a kid with two lollipops throwing one in the bin ‘cos it’s his mate’s favourite and he’s a shithead.”

“Childhood trauma?”

“Shut up, you get the point.”

“Oh, no, no, Listy, we should really explore this…”

And they’d get sidetracked off the matter at hand and fight about something completely inconsequential until they got tired, and then the matter would be forgotten until next time.

Even though Rimmer’s various cockblocking attempts did royally piss him off - he did still want to get his end away, after all - it never quite became enough of a dealbreaker for him to seriously consider moving out, because there was generally always someone new on the horizon he could chase for a bit before Rimmer scared them off.

That said, it’s not like his lack of long-term romantic prospects didn’t bother him at all. After a dry few weeks, where he’d more or less decided not to bring people round any more because it wasn’t worth it, he was feeling a little… blue, in more ways than one. He’d almost scored the night before but balked at the door, unable to submit the poor guy he’d wooed to whatever Rimmer would do next.

That time, Rimmer has sensed something was up and tried to cook dinner but thoroughly cocked it up (more than usual, to the point of it being actively poisonous), so they’d given up and traipsed down to their local, where the food was safe and the booze was cheap. This, plus a couple pints, made Lister droop deeper into his melancholy until he loosened up enough to be honest.

“Why are you always getting in the way, Rimmer?” He lamented, staring moodily into his half-finished pint of lager.

“Sorry?” Rimmer said around a sip of his red wine, glancing around to check if he was obstructing anything.

“I get that having to deal with your housemates having sex isn’t great, but it’s part of living, isn’t it? That’s what you get with houseshares, and you just have to deal with it.”

“Ah, I don’t have to deal with anything I don’t want to deal with, Listy. That’s the whole point of the S.C. Directives.” Rimmer took another sip, but more smugly, pleased with his own invention.

“Stuff your directives,” Lister said mournfully. “Don’t you ever go out on the pull, Rimmer?”

“Oh, absolument,” Rimmer said with an obviously false air of breeziness. “Old Rimsy’s been around a bit, been around the block, been, been... Inside a woman’s vagina.”

Lister grimaced in disgust, setting down his pint harshly enough for it to splash onto the table. He continued, trying to ignore that last statement.

“What if you ever brought someone back, eh? I’d be fine with it.”

“Well, that’d be a whole different matter - I’m a gentleman, Lister. I’d be nothing but quiet and polite with a lady. And she’d be a lady and be nothing but quiet and polite, too.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Rimmer. People make noise when they’re having sex. Or at least if they’ve having fun while having sex.” A thought occurred to him. “You have… Had sex, right, Rimmer?”

“Of course!” Squeaked Rimmer. “Tonnes of it. Loads. Absolutely bucketfuls. Fucketfuls, if you will.” 

“It’s OK if you haven’t, you know,” Said Lister, gently.

“That would be one matter, but I have had sex, thank-you-very-much!”

“Loads of people don’t have sex until later in life, Rimmer, it’s fine.”

“Great, wonderful, absolutely dandy! Now if we could please change the subject, I believe we have a lot of ground to cover regarding your haphazard toothbrush placement in the last week…”

Lister let him change the subject, but bought his housemate a double whisky next time it was his turn to go to the bar.

Rimmer eyed it suspiciously. “This isn’t wine.”

“Nah, it’s not. Figured I’d apologise for my wandering toothbrush.”

Rimmer, not one to look a gift horse too hard in the mouth, cautiously took a little sip, and after he didn't drop dead from poison, took a bigger one.

It wasn’t long until he’d become suitably buttered for further questioning, and Lister slyly steered the conversation back round to romance.

“So, who’s the best lay you’ve ever had?”

Rimmer paused to think, then raised a finger in triumphant recollection. “Hotel in Edinburgh, 2010. Family holiday. Softest sheets in the world, slept like a baby.”

“No, I mean, the best shag?”

“The carpets were pretty nice, too.” 

“No, come on, the best time you had sex?”

“Ah, Lister,” grinned Rimmer beatifically at him. “That would require having had sex.”

“I knew it!” Lister couldn’t help but gloat a little, but only a little.

Rimmer turned white, then red, then opened his mouth to let loose one of a thousand insults ready on his lips (ok, one of about three, but at least one of them was devastating), but stopped when he saw Lister wasn’t saying any more about it. He bit back the retorts, swayed in his chair and took another gulp of his drink, eyeing Lister suspiciously. 

“You’re not going to be a prick about it?”

“Nah, mate, you should know me better than that by now. It’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe not to you. But I…” He trailed off for a moment. “I just can’t even imagine what it’d be like. How I’d even get in that situation.”

“It’s not that hard, man. You just gotta be nice and show an interest in people, see where it goes.”

Rimmer blinked at him. “I thought you said it wasn’t that hard?”

  
After that sorry evening, Lister decided it was his moral imperative to get Rimmer laid.

He found the perfect target in Yvonne McGruder; boxing champion. She could definitely hold her own and had the kind of mental fortitude one needed to survive an encounter with dear Arnie, so he sidled up to her at the bar one day and put it to her. She agreed to a date, which is the easy part. The hard part was setting it up so Rimmer didn’t know he was setting it up.

“Fancy comin’ out with me, Rimmer?” Lister asked innocently one evening, pulling on his leather jacket.

“‘Fraid not, Listy, the Bumper Book Of Crosswords is calling my name. I’m going to conquer number 5 tonight, I just know it.”

“Already did it. Did most of them last week, actually.” Lister grinned at him.

“What? All of them?”

“Yeah. Target age is eight year olds, y’know.”

“Eight and up, Lister, it’s eight and up!”

“Well, looks like your date tonight’s bailed on you. Come on, have a drink, maybe we’ll find you a real date,” Lister waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and while Rimmer rolled his eyes and protested, he still got to his feet and headed to the door.

From then, it was just a matter of turning up at the designated time and place where Yvonne was waiting, and then letting her cordially suggest to Rimmer they go back to his and order a pizza, extra pepperoni. The rest would follow.

Rimmer truly looked like he’d somehow won the lottery using a leftover Aldi receipt and, as they went to leave together, made eye contact with Lister behind McGruder’s back and slammed his forearm up while he clasped his bicep in the universal gesture for “Get innnnn!!”

Lister smiled to himself, allowed a warm glow to creep through his chest at the thought of a good deed done, and nursed a couple more pints by his lonesome. After an hour or two, he crept home and stealthily let himself in, intending to sneak up to bed and congratulate the Big Man in the morning.

He was not expecting the Big Man to be sitting downstairs in the dark, illuminated solely by the soft light of the TV, on which some engineering documentary or other was playing. A half-eaten pizza sat sadly in its box on the floor, and a more than half-empty bottle of cheap whisky sat next to it. 

Lister flicked the lights on. Rimmer didn’t even react. He continues sitting there, in his boxers and half-buttoned shirt, staring blankly forward.

“Ey, how’s it go? Where’s Yvonne?”

“Twelve minutes,” said Rimmer, morosely.

“Eh?”

“Twelve minutes. That’s all it took. And that’s including the time to eat the pizza.”

“Well, uh, better luck next time?” Lister ventured, as he carefully moved forward and helped himself to a slice.

“When’s there going to be a next time, Lister?” Rimmer slurred, leaning over to pick up the bottle and take another swing of shit whiskey. He grimaced, hiccuped a little, and set it back down before leaning back in his seat to look mournfully at the ceiling.

“Women hate me. Everybody hates me. Hell, I hates me, too.” Rimmer drummed his fingers on his chest absentmindedly as he gazed miserably up at the ceiling.

“Eh, don’t say that, Rimmer. Not everybody hates you. Some people haven’t met you yet.”

“Oh, ha-ha, laugh it up, Mr Popular, Mr Shags-Every-Night-And-Twice-On-Saturdays. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“That was one time, Rimmer!” Lister protested.

“Yes, one time for you, more than double a lifetime for me.”

“C’mon, Rimmer, it’ll happen. You’ve just gotta put yourself out there, get some more experience, you’ll find someone.”

“Mmmmph,” Rimmer groaned, “Why can’t they just come to me?”

Lister rolled his eyes almost fondly, snuck another slice of pizza, and stood up.

“Sometimes you gotta make things happen, man. Like right now, I’m making me going to bed happen. Goodnight.”

Then, for reasons unbeknownst to either of them, Lister leaned over, slightly unsteady, and pressed a brief goodnight kiss to Rimmer’s forehead before turning swiftly and bounding up the stairs to his room.

Fuck, Lister thought. Why the fuck had he done that?

Rimmer stared up the stairs for a long time after that, raised an unbelieving hand to brush lightly at the spot Lister’s lips had been, and then let it fall into his lap again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a while trying to figure out chapter splits because this was either TOO LONG or OK AND THEN TOO SHORT, and then I figured, what else is too short? Life. Life is too short to agonise over the chapter word count division in your daft fanfic you're writing for fun.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to Chris Barrie, whose name I just straight-up used for the Totally-Not-Red-Dwarf TV show featured in this chapter. May he never know of my sins.

Despite the ongoing antagonism between them, over time they settle into an almost cosy routine between the two of them. Lister would breathe too loudly, Rimmer would complain, Lister would retaliate by breathing extra-loud and extra-close as much as he dares, and Rimmer would complain some more and eventually one of them would give up.

One thing Lister noticed is how curiously touch-averse Rimmer seemed to be. Even when berating him for mixing up whether he’s using his spatula or Rimmer’s to flip his bacon (they bought the same one because there’s only one Poundland in Bexhill and it only comes in one colour, but Rimmer insists his is wider and thus better), Rimmer never physically took anything from him, never invaded his space, flinched if Lister ever accidentally so much as brushed past him in the hall.

It was almost like he couldn’t touch things - like he’s a ghost or a hologram, and touching real people would remind him that he’s not real. But (unfortunately) he seemed real enough, because after all the house was still tiny and he still managed to trip over Rimmer every now and then, and Rimmer was definitely not averse to touching his things and moving them around (though he screamed bloody murder should Lister ever do the same. Lister still did the same frequently, because what else was he meant to do to amuse himself?)

Lister decided to test his theory a little, one night. They’d gotten comfortable enough to stand maybe being in the same room as each other for more than ten minutes at a time, and had actually (near-accidentally) started watching telly together on a Sunday evening. In fact, it was weirdly cosy - the house was frequently freezing, the boiler being more unreliable than your standard British train service, so through necessity they shared a horrible orange and brown checked picnic blanket snug over their knees to keep warm. Sure, it smelled a little mysteriously of peas, but it was warm and, most importantly, free.

They could never agree on what to watch, so inevitably ended up with something they both detested so they could both moan about it equally. On the occasion in question, it was Green Goliath - some old sci-fi comedy constantly on repeat. Truth be told, neither of them minded it, but both pretended to hate it so they could watch it without the other kicking up a fuss.

“God, I can’t stand this ‘Barrie’ character,” Rimmer moaned during the ad break, getting up to make himself a cup of tea. Absent-mindedly, he set out two of his mugs and added two of his teabags, one in each.

“Really? He kind of reminds me of you.” Lister grinned over his shoulder, sneakily stealing a few more inches of their shared blanket for himself.

“What about that trumped-up goit reminds you of me? All that bootlicking, all those aspirations, the way he’s abjectly miserably terrible at everything and just takes it out on the people around him instead of doing anything to better himself - we’re nothing alike,” Rimmer punctuated this by flinging the teabags into the bin with particular force.

“Did you get that promotion this week, Rimsy?”

“No, of course I didn’t, thanks to that stupid interfering Todhubter and his stupid Eton-groomed smarmy charm and his stupid grubbing up to Hollister and-“ 

“Breathe, Rimmer.” 

Rimmer took a breath, and his face became less puce and more regular tomato. He milk-and-sugared the teas and brought them over, continuing,

“Anyway, you can’t be saying he looks like me? That guy?”

“There’s a bit of a resemblance.”

“He’s ugly! Nostrils like the Channel Tunnel, forehead higher than the Cliffs of Dover.” Rimmer scoffed, setting down the mugs, one on each arm of the settee. (He hated having to do this, but there’s no room for side tables, so he reluctantly does so anyway.)

“Dunno,” Lister said thoughtfully, “I think he’s kind of cute.” 

He accompanied this with a gentle nudge of his knee into Rimmer’s, playfully.

Rimmer responded by yelping, jerking in his seat and knocking his tea off the arm of the sofa where it slid down the radiator and formed a sad puddle on the carpet.

“For goodness sakes, Lister, look what you’ve done!” Rimmer shrieked, scrambling for a tea towel to mop up the spill.

“Jesus, Rimmer, I sort of expected you to stay in your skin instead of jumping out of it!” Lister retorted, clutching his own tea for safety, sort of half out of his seat in a vague attempt to help.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t - just - don’t do that!” Rimmer blustered, flustered, scrubbing uselessly at the carpet. It didn’t seem to be doing much good - the carpet’s that kind of amorphous brown-green you find in rental properties up and down the land which disguises all kinds of stains, so it’s hard to tell. The tea towel was getting worryingly brown, though.

“Do what, Rimmer? Compliment you?” Lister asked innocently, slurping his tea, having made the decision to not help and instead to perch on the sofa arm.

“Well, that, and, interfere with my person!”

“I barely touched you! It was just a nudge!”

“Yes, well, a nudge too far, laddy. Just… Keep your limbs to yourself. And stop hogging the blanket.”

The ad break over, the carpet thoroughly scrubbed, they settled back down, and Lister carefully didn’t push his luck for the rest of the night, but found there’s a little spark of mischievous joy in his chest at the thought of another game to play that would drive Rimmer bonkers.

It started small. He’d just lightly brush his leg against Rimmer’s, just a little, pretending it to be an accident while he was adjusting the blanket. He’d lean over to steal a biscuit from the packet balanced on Rimmer’s sofa arm, and press his knee into his. Rimmer still jumped, sometimes, like he’d been stung, but he doesn’t mention it, and at some point, he started retaliating, nudging harder back in reprimand. It never went beyond a couple rounds, just a gentle back and forth, an injoke of sorts. They didn’t mention it, so they never needed to make anything of it. It was just another thing they did.

While Lister would still claim to hate living with the guy, he can’t explain away how enmeshed they seem to be becoming. Hastings was not exactly party central, and while Lister regularly went out on the lash with his mates from the supermarket, rotating round the various local boozers, there was still not a lot else to do most days but have a quiet night in. Given sitting alone in their dark and tiny rooms was still slightly more depressing than spending time together, they ended up keeping each other company more often than not.

They used to cook separate meals, but gave up after one too many incidents trying to maneuver around each other in the tiny kitchen - including one particularly memorable one where Rimmer elbowed Lister while he was adding some extra spice to one of his various curry recipes, causing him to add about half a jar of cayenne into Rimmer’s mushroom soup and accidentally macing the both of them as it hit the hot liquid and aerosolized. They’d had to stand in the street, wheezing, eyes streaming, until it dissipated enough for them to return.

After that, they either worked separately to cook one meal for the both of them, or cooked together - theory being that if they were trying to work together instead of around each other, they’d be a little more considerate of each other’s movements.

“Pass me the coconut milk?” Rimmer said, peering dubiously into the bubbling pot he was supervising.

Lister, never one to do anything directly, picked it up, sniffed it experimentally, and took a slurp first. 

“Not bad,” He grinned, passing it along, a white milky moustache painting his upper lip.

“Smeg’s sake, can’t take you anywhere,” grumbled Rimmer, tipping it into the pan of what was meant to be a bourguignon but was somewhere distinctly south of that. For one, this was distinctly bourguig-neon, being an unsettling shade of bright orange. Rimmer was hoping the white of the coconut milk would bring it back to a more normal food colour, but his colour theory was about as good as his cooking theory, and it just seemed to get brighter.

Lister licked his lip, and Rimmer’s eyes lingered just a touch too long before he turned sharply away to pick up the red wine, take a swig, and then liberally splash some more into the stew.

“Oi, where’s my cook’s share of tha’?” Lister pestered, leaning over for it.

Rimmer rolled his eyes and held the neck right up to Lister’s face for him to take a gulp, stirring idly with the other. The result was predictably messy, but whatever, they’d both had enough of the ‘cook’s share’ to be past caring.

Their cooking styles were wildly different. Lister was largely happy cooking variations on the same theme - that theme being curry. He was a chaotic force in the kitchen; dangerously sloppy with his knife work, handling ingredients in his ever-present fingerless gloves that might as well have been a second skin, eating half of the ingredients before they got into the dish. But, he was a guy that knew what he liked and how to make that, and that got him through.

Rimmer had a penchant for a more… Avant garde style of cooking. He was obsessed with striving for the finer things in life and as such claimed his culinary tastes were so refined the average plebian couldn’t comprehend them. This led him to try and create such dishes as ‘chicken a la creme de raisin’, where he made a kind of cream-and-raisin soup and stewed unseasoned chunks of chicken breast in it, typically served with bread he’d attempted to cut into portraits of famous war generals, but they all inevitably ended up rather like that ill-fated restoration of that one portrait of Jesus in that rural Spanish church. His basic kitchen skills were at least reasonable, even if his idea of ingredient combinations were not.

Honestly, the bourguignon was one of his better attempts, possibly because of rather than despite how Lister kept sneaking in turmeric and paprika and chilli when his back was turned, which may have explained the colour. It also explained why it was causing the air above to swim like the horizon above a sun-baked road; nearly anything Lister had a hand in, even if he protested that it was mild enough to be fed to babies and sweet old grandmas, made Rimmer’s eyes stream worse than a pirated film on BT internet. 

“D-Delicious,” Rimmer choked out in false bravado, eyes watering, as what he thought was just a particularly vivid carrot turned out to be a Thai pepper in disguise. Though he had no great tolerance for heat, in some ways it stopped him from concentrating on the other much more suspect flavours swimming around his taste buds, and that was a blessing in disguise.

“Maybe French cooking isn’t so bad,” Munched Lister thoughtfully, pouring in some more chilli oil as he dunked in a poppadom. Fusion cuisine, eat your heart out.

Rimmer drowned it out with more wine (luckily, they’d bought a couple bottles, because the cooking wine had been finished long before the cooking.) He liberally splashed some in Lister’s glass, quite forgetting he’d switched to lager, and watched dumbly as red swirled into amber. Lister shrugged and downed it anyway.

“I don’t understand how you do that,” Rimmer said, staring at the empty glass.

“Do wha’?”

The kitchen table is so tiny their knees knock underneath frequently, and Lister deliberately gives Rimmer a nudge, and Rimmer half-heartedly knocks back.

“Survive combinations that would turn anyone else inside out.” Rimmer grimaced pointedly at his food and took in another forkful.

“Bet you’d like to see me inside out,” Lister said, waggling his eyebrows deviously as he shovelled in another mouthful of not-curry-but-close-enough.

Rimmer’s mouth flopped open and closed like a fish (partially from heat, partially from lack of response), and he finally managed to eloquently respond with, “Fwah?”

Lister just winked, leaned over to the fridge (close enough to reach without getting up, as were most things in the kitchen), grabbed another lager and cracked it open.

“What… What does that even mean, you gibbering idiot?” Rimmer finally found enough composure to ask.

“Whatever you want it to, man, I’m just chatting shit,” Lister slurped, and punctuated it by sliding a socked foot halfway up Rimmer’s trousered calf. Rimmer kicked him back, shook the foot away.

They amicably struggled through the rest of the meal, conversation drifting lightly away from other topics, neither quite comprehending that their barely tolerating each other was sliding into something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the stuff I've pre-written; there's half a chapter done where they actually go to the titular cafe, but I have not been writing this all that linearly and it needs bridging to get there. Despite all of this being prewritten it is probably still very messy (not least because I'm writing this in the past tense and also trying to write a YA novel in the present tense and hooboy that gets confusing) but I hope it is still somewhat coherent and most of all, fun!  
> If you've enjoyed this thus far, let me know!! I will attempt to speed up the rate at which I apply brain to keyboard accordingly. :)  
> P.S. Can't Smeg Won't Smeg sure is a special that happened, huh?


	4. Chapter 4

“Let’s go to the beach,” Lister declared at around 1pm one Saturday. He’d woken up early, showered, and was lounging against the stairwell towelling off his dreads, itching for something to do.

Rimmer slowly lowered the local paper’s junior crossword he was busy cheating on.

“Us? Go to the beach? Together?” He echoed faintly.

“Yeah. Might be a laugh.”

“It’s November.” Rimmer pointed out plaintively.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have to go swimming. Can just look at the sea, throw rocks, have an ice cream.”

“Ice cream? In this weather? Are you mad?”

“Maybe. Got any better plans?”

“Actually, Lister, I was considering repeatedly shutting my head in the fridge door to see if it sounds any better than the so-called music you were subjecting the neighbourhood to last night.”

“Oh, you heard that? Thought I was being quiet.”

“Quiet, Lister, is not a concept to be found anywhere within the general vicinity of that din. An entire ambulance fleet’s sirens fed through an underground punk club’s PA system would be quiet compared to that.”

“Ice cream’s on me, then?”

Lister made his best attempt at puppy eyes. Rimmer scowled, sighed irritably, and folded up his newspaper.

He continued to complain while pulling on his boots and coat and halfway down their street, finally giving up when a discarded crisp packet floating on the wind smacked him clean across the face, at which point he switched to complaining about the sorry state of the town.

“Place is going downhill, I tell you. That never used to be a charity shop.” Rimmer sniffed, gesturing towards a Cancer Research. In the window was a poster celebrating five years since it’d opened.

“Exactly how long have you lived here, Rimmer?” Lister asked, suddenly realising he knew precious little about the man’s past. Hell, he only had the vaguest idea about his present life outside the house, other than that he held down some kind of office job in a traditionally hierarchical engineering company that he both hated and was fanatically devoted to. He seemed to take great pride in his status and his prospects, though reading between the lines of what he said about his working life, Rimmer didn’t have much of either.

“Oh, I don’t know, fifteen years? Fifteen long years.” Rimmer shoved his hands in the pockets of his very practical and very ugly olive-green overcoat and stared morosely forwards as he resolutely plodded ahead. “Smeg all to show for it.”

“You never think of getting out?”

“This was getting out,” Rimmer spat, “My big rebellion, moving to the coast because Mother hated it. Thought seaside holidays were too common for the likes of the Rimmers.”

“What kinda holidays did she go in for, then?”

“Oh, city breaks, fancy hotels, skiing holidays, chalets in the alps. Anywhere abroad and inland with a name you can plausibly mispronounce so your entire extended family will laugh at you.”

“You don’t get along, then? You and your fam?”

“No.” Rimmer’s reply was immediate and curt.

Nearly at the seafront, they waited for the green man in silence, then crossed the road to the other side and went to lean on the painted white railings, where they gazed out across the thoroughly grey English sea. It was a classic November day, cold, windy, a hint of rain in the air - or maybe it was just spray from the waves crashing and creeping up the sandy beach before dragging themselves back to the sea.

Rimmer, perhaps stirred in his melancholy by the scene, picked up from his earlier thread, taking Lister by surprise. “I was never good enough for them. Could never live up to my golden brothers, could never do well enough in school, could never fit in. So eventually, I ran away.”

“My Gran loved the seaside. Liked performing pre-emptive strikes against seagulls. Swear she once smuggled a concussed one back in her wheelchair and served it to us for tea the next day.” Lister smiled at the memory, ignoring Rimmer’s exaggerated face of disgust. “I don’t think it’s a bad place to run to.”

Rimmer snorted gently, nostrils flaring in dissent. “It’s hardly running far enough. Look at me, still greasing my way up the company ladder in the hopes that maybe, maybe I’d do something they could be proud of.”

Lister looked at Rimmer with fresh eyes, looked at him hunched forward to lean on the railings, mouth a thin, bitter line, eyes flinty-hard and fixed on the horizon. Honestly, Lister didn’t think Rimmer possessed this kind of self awareness; this confession felt like the brief appearance of sunshine through clouds on an overcast day, and it nearly made him stop breathing in case he made some wrong move that made the darkness fall again.

“What would you do, if you could do anything?” Lister asked gently, trying to keep his tone light and encouraging.”

“I don’t know,” Answered Rimmer slowly, as if he’d never really thought about it before. “All I’ve got is this life. What else would I even do? I’m barely even scraping by like this. Sometimes I think the only reason they haven’t fired me is it’d be too much paperwork for them.”

“What are you good at, what do you like doin’?”

“I don’t know!” Rimmer threw his hands up in futility, turning away from Lister, and Lister felt those brief warm rays of light get swallowed by stormclouds again.

“Let’s go throw rocks at the sea,” said Lister.

“What?”

“Let’s go throw rocks at the sea.”

They crunched their way over the shingle, heading to the water’s edge. He paused every now and then to pick out a particularly juicy looking rock while Rimmer eyed him with disdain, hands thrust deep in his pockets, the tension from earlier not quite gone.

When they were within throwing distance, Lister stopped, shuffling his little collection of rocks in his hands until he found his favourite. Cradling the others carefully, he wound up his arm and flung the rock out to sea, where it skipped once, twice, thrice before vanishing with a satisfying ‘bloop’.

“Fluke,” Rimmer muttered.

Lister skips another, and another, racking up a personal best of five skips along the undulating surface of the sea.

Rimmer barely even watches the last one, seized by a compulsion to find the perfect rock from the ones around their feet and wipe the cocky smirk off Lister’s face.

He threw one. It thunked straight into the water dead ahead of him, barely hitting the water. He tried again, but mistimed the release, and it went widely off course and almost hit Lister, who was a little ahead of him, picking up more rocks for his next attempt. Lister yelped and jumped back, and made a motion as if to throw a rock back at Rimmer, who flipped him off with his middle and forefinger raised. His next attempt goes in vaguely the right direction, at least, but still sinks immediately.

“Why are you getting all the good rocks?” He whined, watching Lister skip another four before a cresting wave made him stop and retreat a little for safety.

“It’s not the rocks, it’s the technique,” Lister smirked, “You gotta get some spin on ‘em.”

Lister pressed a rock into Rimmer’s hand. “Hold it like this, throw from the wrist, you’ll get it.”

Rimmer tried. Rimmer failed.   
Lister watched him do this five more times, offering tips each time, but eventually got frustrated.

“No, like - Here, c’mon,” Lister stood behind the other man, placed his hand over Rimmer’s, gently adjusted his grip on the rock.

“What are you doing, Lister?” Rimmer squeaked without quite meaning to, instinctively trying to pull away from the contact. Lister held firm, pulling Rimmer’s arm back to wind up the throw. Rimmer didn’t wiggle out of the contact and let him do it, let Lister’s arm guide his through the motion, and they watched together as the rock soared out of their combined grips to land with a resolute ‘plop’ in the ocean without a single hop to its name.

They looked dumbly at it for a heartbeat until Lister realised he was still kind of holding Rimmer’s hand and standing way too close, and he hastily stepped back to stand a more normal distance apart.

After a moment of awkward silence, Lister breaks the forming ice.

“Well. Guess there’s no point switching to becoming a professional rock skimmer, eh?”

“Lister, shut up.”

After all that, they’re both pretty well frozen, hands numb from handling damp rocks in the winter cold. Rimmer piped up that he knew a cafe a little way up the road, so they trudged up the beach for lunch and a hot drink.

The Sovereign Light Cafe was small, and honestly didn’t look like much, but it was familiarly cosy in the way a million other tiny cafs up and down the length of the land are cosy. It was clean, and fairly bright, and the walls were studded with pictures - half of them of the same well-groomed clean-cut blokes in various places around the cafe. Lister figured they must be famous around here, or something.

As they enter, a lady with a dead straight blonde bob cut that could’ve been a wig looked up from the book she’d been reading behind the counter and got to her feet with a dopey smile.

“Alright, Arn? Brought a friend? And your sketchbook, eh?” She greeted them, her voice pleasantly lilting if a little vacant, and Lister bites back his surprise at seeing someone greet Rimmer in a genuinely friendly manner.

Rimmer, turning pink, bashfully turned aside, and answered stiffly. “Erm, not today, Holly. Just popping in for a spot of breakfast. This is my flatmate, David.”

“Oh, alright, Dave?” Holly leaned in to plant a quick peck on his cheek, and Lister thought he’d just been adopted. When she stepped back, she planted her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “You look familiar. Where‘ve I seen you before?”

“Er, nowhere, nothing, you don’t know him, Holly!” Rimmer’s flustered and flushing even deeper now, past pink and careening crimsonwards. “Listen, I’ll have my usual, and David will have… Whatever you don’t object to drowning in chilli sauce, probably.”

Lister winked at her. “Full English’ll do, but he’s not kidding about the hot sauce, if you have any. And a tea.”

That settled, Rimmer strode over to a table by the beachfront window as if on autopilot. Lister, sensing something new to press his flatmate about, follows eagerly, a grin creasing his hamster cheeks.

“Come here a lot, do you ‘Arn’?”

Rimmer barely spared him a glance, gaze firmly fixed out the window at the grey ocean waves.

“Now and then.”

“With your sketchbook, ‘Arn’?”

“Shut up. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh? You don’t? Lovely Hol’ mistook your clipboard for an easel?”

“Oh, drop it, Lister.”

“Alright. Am I in it, though?”

That made Rimmer look at him, shooting daggers from his eyes.

“Even were I to come here and sketch - which I don’t - I most certainly would not draw your dog’s dinner of a mug in it. I see enough of it already and I don’t need any more, thank-you-very-much.” He huffed, folding his arms defensively and resuming his stony gaze out of the window.

In-ter-es-ting. This just got curiouser and curiouser.

The breakfast came fast, fresh and hot, delivered by a tall and balding man who exuded exactly the same kind of laidback energy as the blonde Holly that took their orders. He smiled and introduced himself as also Holly, making a dry and obviously oft-repeated joke about how they never need apply for joint ownership of the bank account because either could turn up at the bank and it’d be fine.

When Mr Holly had drifted off, Lister picked up his cutlery eagerly, mouth already watering. All the breakfast components were exactly the right kind of terrible. The sausages are cheap and probably more processed than your average modern pop song; the beans mushy and the tomato sauce watery; the hash brown is near burnt levels of crispy and seeping oil; the toast slathered in something that he very much can believe isn’t butter; the bacon chewy; the tomato more tasteless than his dad’s pinup collection; and the mushrooms a sad, loamy afterthought. 

There is also, to his delight, a sticky bottle of luridly orange hot sauce, dragged out from the depths of some forgotten cupboard. He upended it over the lot while Rimmer eyed him with distaste as he daintily hovered a knife and fork over his own steaming pile of bangers and mash.

Conversation was thin on the ground while they devoured their meals, silence only broken by various gross slurping noises from Lister’s end of the table. Rimmer seemed distracted, his attention only half on his food as he gazed out of the window and contemplated the iron sea rolling a few tens of metres away.

“Penny for your thoughts, Rimmer?” Lister chirped, mopping up the last of his beans with the crusts of his toast.

It took Rimmer some effort to tear his eyes away from the ocean and back to the present.

“I could really go for an ice cream,” He said, after a pause.

Lister grinned.

“Brutal!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A weird chapter? A weird chapter. But it's a written chapter and so in it goes. 
> 
> Apologies again to anyone actually from this part of the world for mashing up the geography of your lovely town for the purposes of making the fic run smoothly. The cafe is technically in Bexhill and not Hastings and that's maybe kind of a long walk, but hey, call it artistic license.
> 
> They're throwing rocks in the sea because I very recently got to throw rocks in the sea and it was great. I, like Rimmer, can't skip rocks for toffee.
> 
> Also, peep the lil extra Keane references in here, because I can.


	5. Chapter 5

When they got back from the cafe, having rounded off their excursion with Mr Whippy’s and the customary 99 flake and a quick trip to waste their spare change in the money-guzzling penny-pushing games of the Palace Arcades, Lister allowed himself to feel pleased. Pleased that he’d finally made progress with his prudish, stuck-up housemate, who seemed to be showing promising signs of maturing from a prick to a person.

Except, when they’d got home, and Lister went to put the kettle on and offer Rimmer a cuppa, he turned round to see Rimmer’s heels just vanishing out of sight as he scurried up the stairs and bolted himself in his attic room.

‘Oh well,’ thought Lister, ‘Maybe Mr. Robot needs to go plug himself in and recharge.’

But when that night turned into the next day, and the day after that, and the week after that, with Lister only observing Rimmer’s conspicuous absence in cups left on the draining board or papers abandoned on the couch, he began to get annoyed. Annoyed because he found that he was actually missing the git, damn him, missed their slowly-established routines of cooking awful food together and watching worse nonsense on the telly. 

He started leaving messes, couch cushions upside down, plates on the side, towers of curry-crusted pots and pans in the sink. He knew, he knew it must be driving Rimmer crazy, especially once he started leaving near-radioactive socks in a trail along the stairs and toothpaste smears in crude shapes on the bathroom mirror and toenail clippings in unsubtle places, like the arms of the settee or in whatever book Rimmer’d left out or at the bottom of Rimmer’s favourite coffee mug.

Rimmer’s endurance of such was almost impressive, but finally he broke, and the first post-it note appeared, neatly plastered at eye level on the fridge.

It was luridly pink and obviously stolen from Rimmer’s office, judging by the company logo in the corner. In neat capital letters written in a cheap and failing biro, it read:

“KINDLY DESIST YOUR TREASONOUS ACTIVITIES, SMEG-FOR-BRAINS.”

Only Rimmer could refer to minor household nuisances as ‘treasonous activities’, thought Lister, as he grinned and doubled down in his nuisances.

“I MEAN IT. I AM WORKING ON A VERY IMPORTANT PROJECT AND AM NOT TO BE DISTURBED.”

That night, Lister played his guitar for as long and as loudly as he could manage, and Rimmer holds out for a solid half hour until he starts jumping up and down on Lister’s ceiling and screaming like a banshee.

“WILL. YOU. STOP?” Shrieked Rimmer from above, muffled by the layers between them, but he still impressively managed to penetrate the noise pollution Lister was cranking out of his tortured six-string.

“You whaaaaaat?” Lister yelled back, accompanying it with a truly mangled F chord.

“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!”

“Come down here and make me, smeg ‘ed!”

There was a pause, then a muted slam, then thumping down the stairs and a vicious pounding at Lister’s door. Lister grinned at that. He’d won.

He took his time laying down his guitar, playing a couple last ear-splitting chords, then sauntered over to answer his door, timing it between Rimmer’s frantic knocks so that he opened the door just as Rimmer was throwing himself forward to knock again, causing him to stumble off balance into the room, Lister stepping smoothly aside to let him fall.  
Rimmer caught himself, though, merely staggering forward a couple steps before reeling upright in manic rage, his eyes bloodshot, his hair wild, streaked with flecks of paint from where he’d clearly been running smudged fingers through it. 

Lister almost couldn’t believe the sight - this man, this man who lived in clean-starched everything, who ironed even his underpants, who had a ten-step grooming ritual and was never caught dead with anything less than an army-ready haircut, was standing snarling in his room like a wild man from the moors, dressed in a grubby once-white t-shirt and actual honest-to-goodness sweatpants.

“Shut up, Lister, shut up!” The apparition growled at him, advancing on him with a still-dripping paintbrush pointed menacingly at him.

“I’ve shut up, Rimmer, are you alright? You look like a poltergoose, or summat,” Lister replied, hands raised in mock surrender.

“I am not smegging alright, Lister. You, you’re the one haunting me, not the other way round,” He spat. “And it’s a polkageist, moron.”

“What the hell are you doing up there, man? I’ve not seen you in days. I’m worried about you.”

“If you were worried about me, you wouldn’t be making my life even harder with your flagrant disrespect of the house rules, mi-smegging-laddo!” Rimmer advanced, brandishing his paintbrush, and Lister wonders for a brief and fleeting moment if he’s actually about to get stabbed with it.

“I wouldn’t need to if you were actually around! I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

“Have you tried, oh, I don’t know, actually just leaving me be? Maybe knock sweetly and ask, or leave a note, instead of going straight to being a disgusting slob to get a rise out of me?”

“...Would you have responded to any of that?”

Rimmer went an ugly shade of puce, and Lister fancied he could hear the blood vessels bursting in his forehead. “That is completely besides the point. You’re impossible! Completely smegging impossible!” He threw his hands up in despair, and the paintbrush flew clean out of his grasp and gently arced a streak of cadmium red across the ceiling before dropping at Lister’s feet. They both stared at the smudge, then at each other.

“...You’re paying for that, you know,” Lister broke the silence.

Rimmer sniffed. “Your room, your deposit.” He snatched up his paintbrush, spun on his heel, and stalked out of the room, disappearing back to his attic cave.

“Smeg,” said Lister quietly to himself, and sat down on his bed to stare at the smudge and wonder what the hell had gone wrong.

That was the last he saw of Rimmer for two more weeks. He felt guilty enough to start picking up after himself and to stop leaving passive-aggressive messes around the place - and, to be fair, enough of Rimmer had rubbed off on him that leaving the common areas grubby got to him, too. His room is still largely a biohazard, sure, but at least that just affects him.

Then, one bleary weekend afternoon as he surfaced from a mind-melting stonker of a night out with a hangover to rival a Dibbley’s overbite, there’s a flier neatly pushed under his door. He’d been going out drinking even more in order to escape the weird atmosphere that had invaded the house and the resulting haze had meant his room was in more disarray than ever, so he almost missed it, nestled as it was between some truly awful novelty underpants and a couple of cans that had missed the bin, but he almost slipped on it when stumbling out to the loo and so it still managed to catch his attention.

ART EXHIBITION

DEBUT OF A. R. TIST

SOVEREIGN LIGHT CAFE  
SATURDAY 19TH DECEMBER  
12-6PM

The background was a stormy grey seascape, eerily reminiscent of Hastings in November.

Lister stared at it, then staggered over it to relieve himself in the bathroom, accidentally kicking it under some more discarded laundry, and in his foggy state managed to completely forget about it until another turned up a couple days later.

He examined that one a bit more carefully but still almost entirely managed to forget until he ran into Rimmer when he stumbled in on the Friday evening, his evening curtailed by Petersen’s encounter with a dodgy kebab that led to him spewing all over the lovely lady Lister’d been trying to get off with. This meant he was home at the only-slightly-unsightly hour of half midnight.

Rimmer was lounging at their tiny dining table too-casually in his definitely-not-an-antique dressing gown he’d first encountered him in, his left leg crossed over his right, which was jiggling furiously up and down. Lister almost did a double-take at actually encountering him willingly in a shared house space without Rimmer doing the vanishing trick he’d gotten too used to the past month.

He took a deliberately telegraphed sip of tea and laid down the book he probably hadn’t been reading with a flourish.

“A-hem, Listy, welcome home. I was wondering what you were doing tomorrow?”

“Dunno,” said Lister, hovering by the stairs, still quite drunk, ever so slightly weirded out by this unexpected encounter. “Have a lie in, slob around, maybe get a chip butty if I’m feelin’ up to it?”

Rimmer’s face fell. “Ah. Well. Never mind. I’ll, uh - I’ll see you later, then.”

He got up from the table, picked up his book, put down his book, picked up his tea, dumped it in the sink, furiously scrubbed it with his own personal dish soap, dumped it in the drying rack with more force than was strictly necessary and brushed past Lister to disappear up the stairs and barricade himself back in his room.

Lister watched him go, swaying slightly as he stood, then noticed that yet another flyer had dropped from Rimmer’s pocket and was sitting innocently on the stairs.

He picked it up and read it again, and figured that maybe he did have Saturday plans after all, though he didn’t have the foggiest idea why.

He still managed to oversleep - he hadn’t been quite put together enough to set and alarm and his natural body clock was practically non-existent, so after waking up and going back to sleep in a pleasant snoozy cycle for a couple rounds, it was quite late when he woke up.

4:30pm kind of late, actually.

Smeg.

Still without knowing why he was doing this, he stamped and swore his way through making himself halfway presentable, taking the swiftest shower he’d bothered with in years and pulling on his least abominable items of clothing. He bolted out of the house at just gone five and hustled down towards the seafront, his heart hammering with some unknown anticipation.

Holly - the female, blonde Holly - actually comes out to meet him when he arrives, puffing and out of breath, a scowl on her face. 

“Nice of you to show up,” she snipes. “Was almost about to close up early, actually.”

“Alright, alright, I don’t even know why I’m ‘ere,” panted Lister, bending over to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath. Smeg, he needed to introduce some exercise into his routine that didn’t involve skating around on the back of trolleys or juggling pool balls.

“You… Don’t?” Said Holly, slowly, animosity slowly draining away from her features.

“I don’t, Hol, I really don’t. I just know Rimmer kept leaving these fliers around the place, then I overslept, but I’m still ‘ere, eh?”

“He… Didn’t tell you?” A strange expression stole over Holly’s face, and she stepped aside to leave the door clear for him to enter through. “Well, you’d better go have a look then, hadn’t you?”

Entirely unsure what to make of that cryptic statement, Lister gathered himself and stepped into the warmth of the Sovereign Light Cafe.

It wasn’t the most well thought out of gallery locations - the tables pushed aside and the chairs repurposed as makeshift easels, propping up several large canvases. The male Holly was lounging behind the counter, and if Lister had been properly paying attention, he might have seen a familiar curly brown head duck behind said counter as he walked in.

Not knowing quite what else to do, Lister strolled up to the canvas nearest the door. It was the beach scene from the flyer, he realised, but the flyer had cropped out half of the thing; where the flyer had mostly shown the sky and the sea, stormy and grey, the painting had the beach, and a small figure poised with one arm raised, as if in the middle of throwing something.

‘Heh,’ Lister thought, ‘I’ve got a jacket that colour.’

He moved on to the next; a blurry portrait of lights spilling out onto wet pavement. The artist must be local - the lights were a very good copy of those on the beachfront arcade just up the road. The canvas after that is smaller - a still life of two dish soaps, side by side. One yellow, one green. Unusual subject for a lighting study, but it’s kind of cute, somehow, and Lister thinks of the bottles sitting next to his own sink at home.

In the next, a mouth is leaning forward to take a bite of an ice cream held by someone else. A funny feeling started to creep over Lister as he noted the pale skin of the hand, and the darker skin of the mouth. Must be the lighting, he told himself, hurrying on to the next. In this one, two pairs of legs are stretched out towards a TV perched on top of a bookshelf; one bare, save for a hint of tropical-print boxer shorts, the others pajama-clad.

His mouth went dry, and his stomach started churning, as if looking for a means to escape. These paintings - these paintings were all too familiar. Sure, they were vague, impressionistic, hazy memories in oils, but the coincidences were racking up into something he didn’t know what to make of.

They were good paintings. They were also unquestioningly good paintings of his life.

When he turned back to face the door, he found himself face-to-face with the last painting. The largest painting. A painting that needed two chairs and the support of the wall behind it to stay upright.

It was him. It was Lister, his face, frozen perfectly in cheeky grin, exactly how he looked after some stupid comeback, somehow more handsome than the mirror ever showed him, eyes a-twinkle, cheeks flushed, teeth white.

For a moment, he quite forgot how to breathe.

Holly appeared silently at his right elbow.

“Good, in’t it?” she said, quietly.

“Yeah,” he croaked, “It is.”

There was a nervous clearing of a throat behind him, and he turned slowly to see Rimmer straightening up from behind the counter, in a dark blue dress shirt and red tie he’d never seen before. His face was pink and his hair slightly astray, and he looked like he wanted to evaporate with nervous energy, brushing non-existent dirt from his midriff and combing fingers through his hair.

“So. Erm. Surprise?” He said.

Lister had absolutely no idea whether to congratulate him or punch him. Maybe both.

“What… What is this?” Lister said, gesturing vaguely at the paintings.

“I, um, this is. Um. This is me doing what I want to do, I suppose.” Rimmer twisted his hands before him, gazing out the window to look upon the sea, barely visible in the winter dark.

“It’s brilliant,” Lister breathed out, his chest tight.

“You think so?” Rimmer squeaked, his attention snapping full force to stare Lister anxiously in the face, before he cleared his throat again self-consciously and repeated in a more normal voice, “You really think so?”

“I do, man, they’re good - they’re really good,” Lister swept his eyes round the room again and found he truly meant every word. They were good. They were really good.

Beside him, Holly squealed a little with joy and clapped her hands, before bustling off to pester Holly to make tea and cake. Rimmer was summarily ejected from behind the counter, where he slunk over to Lister to stand awkwardly and beam round at his little art show.

“What did you think of the name? A. R. Tist? Arnold Rimmer… A. R., then Tist, for Artist, geddit?” He beamed, a slightly manic edge to his smile.

“Yeah, Rimmer, I got the ‘artist’ part, but I never thought you’d actually be the artist, y’know,” Lister chuckled, still unable to take his eyes off the paintings. He kept coming back to the portrait of himself, larger than life, smiling out from the wall. “What possessed ya, man?”

“Well, you know, we had that conversation, and I thought… To hell with it. I’d make a proper go of it. Holly and Holly agreed to let me display them here. I’ve actually sold a couple, would you believe it - sure, maybe they went to old grannies who looked like they couldn’t tell a Van Gogh from vomit, but a sale’s a sale,” He said brightly. “There was even a man that gave me his business card, told me to get in touch. Appears to be some art dealer from L.A. - L.A.! Los Angeles! Imagine that,” Rimmer shook his head in disbelief, arms crossed, his thumbs tucked neatly in his armpits.

“I’m proud of ya, man, I really am. This almost makes up for the past month of being ignored, you smeg pot,” Lister fondly reached out to lightly punch the other man on the arm, and to his credit, Rimmer barely flinched, almost seeming to lean into the contact.

“One thing, though,” said Lister, turning back to Lister-on-canvas. “Why me?”

“Well, ah, you see, the thing is-” started Rimmer, stuttering, when they were interrupted by Holly pressing plates of thick gooey chocolate cake into their hands and also-Holly handing them steaming mugs of tea, which rather cut the conversation short.

They stood in a little pleased huddle, chewing and sipping pleasantly while feeding Rimmer’s much-starved ego, until it came to be 6pm and they were kicked out into the cold and dark so the Hollys could rearrange their cafe for the next day, the canvases to be picked up later.

Rimmer and Lister stood under the night sky, the wind whistling through them, and listened to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

By silent, mutual agreement, they crossed to lean on the railings and stare out at an ocean they could barely make out.

Lister was the first to break the silence.

“So?”

“So what?”

“That painting.”

“Which painting?” Rimmer’s voice was unnaturally high.

“You know which. The one of me.”

“Ah. That painting.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“That must’ve taken hours, Rimmer. Hours and hours. I can’t believe you’d voluntarily spend that much time staring at my mug.”

“...Then maybe you just haven’t been looking at the right times.”

“What?”

“I said, maybe you just never noticed. That I was looking.”

“I… I didn’t, Rimmer. What are you getting at?”

“I, erm. Isn’t it obvious?”

“No, Rimmer, stop weaselling around. It isn’t obvious.”

“Ah.”

“Why, Rimmer?” Lister presses, even though he isn’t sure he wants to hear the answer.

“I, erm. I’m infatuated with you, Lister. Erm. David. Erm, Dave.”

Lister can feel Rimmer’s eyes on him, pleading with him, scanning him for some kind of reaction, but Lister’s blood feels like ice in his veins and his mind is just full of static and the sea, and it’s all he can do to grip the railing to keep him grounded and keep staring out to sea.

“Erm. Some kind of response would be nice, please?” Rimmer’s nasally voice pipes up from beside him.

“What are you doing, Rimmer?” Lister said finally, faintly.

“I’m confessing to you, you gimboid.”

“Confessing?” Lister echoed, voice low, turning round to face Rimmer, who involuntarily stepped back when he saw the look on Lister’s face. “Confessing? After treating me like shit since we met, treating anyone I brought round like shit, then finally, finally, when you were becoming less of a git, going completely smegging ghost on me and leaving me in the dark for a flippin’ month while you worked on some insane stalker portrait project, then summoning me down here with absolutely no idea what was going on, then you spring this on me? Are you completely stark raving bonkers, man? Have you actually flipped?”

He was yelling by the end of it, completely past caring who heard, swept up in the torrent of raw and confusing emotions Rimmer’s sudden ‘confession’ had unlocked.

Rimmer, though it was hard to make out in the dim light, was completely white. His mouth flopped uselessly open and closed a couple of times, like a fish out of water, as he fumbled for what to say next.

He finally settled for, “Oh. Er. Um. Right, then,” span on his heel, and disappeared into the night.

Lister stared after him, chest heaving, then turned to lean on the railing again, staring out to sea instead. He stayed for a long time, listening to the waves, getting colder and colder, until the strength of his shivers forced him to finally head home, his cheeks wet with tears he barely noticed shedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so it's 1am and I really haven't proofread this at all but IT IS DONE and thus IT IS POSTED and I will FIX IT LATER, if needed.
> 
> Sometimes we gotta make it hurt in order to make the reconciliation sweeter, eh? All in good time, dear readers, all in good time. <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Took a short break to participate in The Literal Challenge's Scriptly Writing challenge; 14 screenplays in 14 days. I've absolutely been writing, just not this! If there's fewer embellishments on the dialogue now... You know why.  
> Glad to get back into it and start resolving that cliffhanger - or not..? ;)

The house was dark and silent when he crept through the door, and Lister heaved a sigh of relief as he tugged off his boots with his toes. Rimmer’s shoes and jacket were there - he must have come home and gone straight to sleep.

Perhaps not straight to sleep - as Lister snuck across to the kitchen tap to grab a glass of water, the telltale fumes of cheap whisky hit him, and as he squinted through the darkness, he noticed the half-empty bottle and glass left idly by the couch. He ignored the pang in his chest, gulped down his water, and headed up to bed.

He lay in the darkness for a long time before falling asleep, wondering if his housemate was doing the same above him. He couldn’t shake the weird feeling of betrayal that Rimmer’s art show had given him - the suddenness of the confession, or how Rimmer had expected him to just be ok with all of it. 

What was he meant to have done? Whip off his trousers and moan, ‘Oh, Rimsy, do me right here on top of the cake counter!’ while Holly and Holly looked on? Just forgive him for the weeks of silent treatment, of thinking he’d done something to make Rimmer hate him, really hate him? He’d almost been fine with it - if it had just been Rimmer doing weird Rimmer things - but that his motive had been ‘love’ just infuriated him in ways he couldn’t quite put words to.

Lister - heaven help him - had actually sort of started to consider Rimmer a friend, and the inexplicable cut off had fucked with him more than he’d care to admit. And then to find it was because Rimmer thought he was in love with him? Rimmer? In love with him? When had he ever shown anything but thinly veiled contempt for him? Sure, they’d been getting on better, but theirs was a relationship of perpetual bickering that he’d just kind of gotten used to. Call him old fashioned, but constant put-downs and character assassinations were not romance in his book - banter for mates, not marriages-to-be.

Eventually, after a remedial can of lager or two, he slipped into unconsciousness.

Rimmer wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the morning, either, but the whisky bottle and glass had been removed, the couch cushions plumped. Everything felt too neat, too clean, and it made him feel queasy.

Lister’s stomach growled, and he was hit with the desire to head down to the Sovereign Light Cafe and grab breakfast - a notion that swiftly disappeared when he realised that was Rimmer’s haunt, with Rimmer’s friends, and he should steer clear in case the man wanted space.

Instead, he settled for a quick trip to the corner shop, and returned with all the ingredients to make his own fry-up, and some extra snacks for good measure. Then a couple packs of lager - he was running low, that was all, he wasn’t going to drown his sorrows like that.

Sure, he cracked one open as he started cracking eggs, but that was just one. He opened another after spacing out while pushing bacon and mushrooms round the pan, just to make the burnt smell he’d produced in the kitchen a little easier to bear. He’d then needed to open a third, of course, given he forgot their shitty frying pan’s handle had no kind of heat insulation on it and had picked it up unprotected, dropping his mess of a breakfast on the floor and knocking over the can in the process.

He cleaned up the mess on the floor but left the pans, and retreated upstairs with the rest of the pack, his snacks and some buttered bread - the only bit he hadn’t managed to wreck. He sat on the floor, back resting against his bed, and drank while he stared out into space.

He knew this was a horrible coping mechanism, but he also didn’t much care.

Night crept in before he knew it, and he found himself sitting in the dark surrounded by empty cans and crisp packets, his legs stiff and his bum numb.

Just then, he heard the click of the front door’s lock, the rustle of Rimmer’s coat. He staggered to his feet, unsteady, the twin forces of day drinking and vicious pins and needles conspiring against him. He nearly tripped, swore, righted himself, and headed for the door.

He managed to get to the stairs just as Rimmer was starting up them, his startled face looking up into Lister’s. Rimmer blanched, turned on his heel, and made as if to bolt back out the door and into the night, weasel blooded through and through.

“Rimmer! Wait!” Lister called after him, wobbling over to the stairs to descend them as best as his blood-deprived legs would allow, leaning heavily on the banister.

Rimmer froze, hand on the latch, then slowly turned round.

“Ah! Lister! I didn’t see you there!” He lied through his teeth, oozing false cheer.

“Rimmer, we need to talk.” Lister swayed slightly where he was, and feigned a nonchalant lean against the wall to mask it. Rimmer eyed him critically.

“You’re drunk.”

“Am not!”

“You’re as sozzled as a sausage in Sauvignon Blanc. You’re not fooling anyone, miladdo.”

“Alright, fine, I ‘ad a couple cans. I’m good though, man, I’m good.”

“I beg to differ.”

“C’mon, Rimmer, we need to talk.”

“No, we don’t.” Rimmer’s voice squeaked higher.

“Yeah we do. I’m not gonna let this fester, Rimmer. We’re sorting this out.”

Rimmer took half a step back, as if reconsidering running out the door and down in the street in just his socks and never coming back, but he thought better of it and deflated, his shoulders drooping in defeat.

“Alright, then. Tea?”

Lister nodded and perched on the couch while Rimmer set about boiling the kettle in silence. When they were sat, side by side on the tiny couch, a steaming brew balanced next to each of them, each waited for the other to break the silence.

“So,” said Lister.

“So,” echoed Rimmer.

“You ignored me for a month,” Lister began.

“Because I was working!” Rimmer interjected.

“Working on a secret surprise art show featuring… Us. Me.”

“After we went to the beach, I, erm, I realised some things, and I needed to work them out. That was me working them out.” Rimmer at least had the good grace to seem a little embarrassed, ducking to the side to sip his tea guiltily.

“Rimmer, you explained absolutely nothing! Just as it seemed like we were becoming mates, you shut me out! What was I meant to think?”

“Erm. I don’t know. I didn’t think of that.”

“No, you smeggin’ didn’t.”

“Sorry?” Rimmer ventured, and Lister scoffed.

“You think ‘sorry’s gonna cut it?”

“I don’t know, Lister! I’ve never done this before!”

“Glad you don’t make creepy art shows of all your crushes, then. Unless you’ve got a hell of a lot of portraits in your attic I don’t know about.”

“You thought it was creepy?” Rimmer’s eyes widened a little in panic.

“A little, to be honest! I was gonna brush it off, because, well, I was just happy to see you’d done something for yourself, but…” Lister twisted to look at Rimmer properly. “Love?”

“Alright, alright!” Rimmer yelped, flustered. “You don’t need to trot out the L-word like it’s some kind of show pony to be pranced about at every opportunity.”

“What d’you want me to call it, then?”

“My, erm, emotional affliction?”

“Affliction? And they say romance is dead.” Lister rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know if you’d noticed, Lister, but I am not Hasting’s most eligible bachelor,” Rimmer’s tone turned bitter, “Nobody’s queuing round the block for the chance to woo Arnold J. Rimmer. I don’t have a lot of form with this kind of thing.”

“I know, Arn, I know,” replied Lister softly, then mentally hit himself as he saw Rimmer flinch at the unaccustomed use of his first name. “Which, um, which is why I was kind of wondering… Are you sure?”

“Am I sure what?”

“Are you sure it’s, y’know, the real deal? Not just, like… Making a friend?”

“I’ve had friends, Lister!” Rimmer’s nostrils flared indignantly.

“Rimmer, the only people I ever hear you talk about are your colleagues, your parents, or your brothers, and you hate all of them.”

“There was… There was Porky Roebuck! We were bezzie mates, him and I. Good ol’ Porky. We had such good times. He only beat me up seven or eight dozen times. Oh, how I miss that guy.”

Lister looked blearily at Rimmer for a couple seconds, but was completely unable to tell if he was joking or not.

“There’s Holly and Hol too, of course.”

“Alright, you’ve got me there, but, still, Rimmer - couldn’t this just be misplaced friendship?”

“You think I’m so stupid as to not know my own feelings, Lister?” Rimmer’s voice was quiet.

“Not like you’re stupid, just - this stuff is hard, and confusing, and if you’re a bit new to it, well…”

“Much as you might think otherwise, Listy, I am not a completely backwards, emotionally illiterate jellyfish.” His voice was still soft, but a steely edge lay below, cutting its way to the fore as Rimmer continued, gathering pace. 

“Even if I am a stunted wreck of a man who has more ingrown toenails than close relations in my life - even if I’ve had more hot dinners than exchanged words of affection - even if I’m a worthless, abysmal coward who’s never amounted to anything more than a pencil pusher in a third rate manufacturing firm - I still have enough brain cells to rub together to recognise what’s going on in my own fucking head.”

Rimmer was flushed, breathing heavily with his outburst of emotion, and Lister could swear there were pinpricks of tears in his eyes. All Lister could do was gape at him. Rimmer got to his feet and gazed down at him - for a heartbeat, it seemed he was about to leave, but then he continued.

“And, actually, considering how much of a spineless git I am, consider how I worked for a smegging month to put onto canvas exactly what I felt about you, and then display it publicly. This isn’t some passing fancy. This is about as real as it gets for me, Lister.”

Then he did turn to leave, and Lister, quite without thinking, reached out and grabbed his wrist. Rimmer snatched it away, snapping, “Leave it, Lister!” and Lister’s sluggish mind registered the new thick note in his voice and realised Rimmer really was close to tears.

Still moved by something beyond his conscious mind, Lister clambered to his feet and fumbled for Rimmer’s arm again. Rimmer turned, eyes wet, and Lister, not quite in control of his momentum, fell in a bit too close, and then they met.

Rimmer’s lips crashed into Lister’s like waves onto Hasting’s stony beach, fighting for purchase on rocky ground. It was messy, and desperate, a hurricane of pent up feelings unleashed for the first time. His hands cupped Lister’s face as if it was the only thing from keeping him from being swept away entirely. Lister, wits fuddled by alcohol and more than a little starved for touch himself, found himself pressing closer to Rimmer, wanting to bathe himself in the glow of another warm body.

It felt like it was both fleeting and forever when they broke away, panting, staring wide-eyed at each other.

“I - I - I have to go,” garbled Rimmer, then he fled up the stairs, two at a time.

This time, Lister let him go, standing stupidly beside the sofa, cold and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It gets worse before it gets better... Or it gets better before it gets worse? Who's to say?
> 
> P.S. There is also a Rimmer POV companion fic in the works (with a nod and a wink to Triquetra123), but I miiiiight hold onto it until this is finished... Or I could publish in parallel..? Ah, what a tease I am. We shall see.


	7. Chapter 7

Monday morning found Lister no closer to figuring out what the hell was going on. He’d snuck out in the morning without encountering Rimmer and had spent the day coasting round the supermarket car park on the back of the trolleys he was meaning to be parking, scooting rings upon rings in an attempt to escape the circular thoughts chasing round his mind.

Still, he couldn’t shake Rimmer’s tearfully stricken face, the sloppy and hastened kiss, the feel of his body pressed up against his. No matter how many laps he did, he couldn’t push it out of his head.

So lost in thought was he that he barely registered Petersen joining him, scooting along on his own trolley, his long legs matching Lister’s pace easily.

“Eh, Schumacher, ya wanna join us fer a bev?” His laidback Danish lilt cutting through Lister’s brain fog, crumbling his thoughts into flakes of pastry.

Lister, uncharacteristically, had to take a second to think about it. He knew he should go back and talk to Rimmer (again). He knew he should stop drinking so much to mask his problems. He also knew that he really, really didn’t want to be dealing with any of this right now.

“Sure, alright,” He found himself saying, and they scootled off together to the end of their shifts.

Four or five pints later, cosied up in one of the too-small snugs at their preferred watering hole, Lister was feeling a little bit better about life. Or, at least, sufficiently distracted, because Kristine Kochanski was behind the bar, and she was wearing new lipstick, and intoxicating new perfume, and Lister reckoned that here was the tonic to all of his woes.

Sure, he’d never managed to get with her before (and not for lack of trying), but hell, he wasn’t sure if he could feel much worse about things, and Krissie was cute and nice and funny and everything Rimmer was not.

He drained his drink, called the next round, and sauntered up to the bar.

“I’ll ‘ave one of your cutest bartenders, please,” He called, with a cheeky little wave.

She rolled her eyes fondly and slowly headed over, taking her time. Lister waited, let her come, kept a lid on the anticipation bubbling in his chest.

“Changed your hair, Krissie?” He leant casually on the bar, projecting his most charming grin her way.

“No, I haven’t changed my hair,” replied Kochanski, a smile playing on her own lips.

“Oh? New top, then?”

“This is my uniform, Dave, I’m always wearing it.”

“Hmmmm…” He made a show of looking her up and down, while she stood, bemused. “I’ve got it! New teeth?”

“Shove off,” She laughed, playfully pushing him on the shoulder, and oh, how he loved that laugh.

“Looks good,” He said, now the jig was up. “Smells good.”

“Thanks,” she replied demurely, looking down. “Tim got ‘em for me.”

“Tim?” Lister repeated, and he could’ve sworn the lights flickered, or maybe it was just his brain overwriting news it didn’t want to hear.

“Yeah, Tim. He’s the chef here.” She looked over her shoulder towards the kitchen door, and he knew it wasn’t just the warm lighting making her face blush.

“Oh? Well, I was hoping there was something cooking over here, if you know what I’m saying.” Lister tried to keep his tone light, his posture relaxed, fighting against the rising feeling of doom currently wetting his ankles and making rapid progress towards his knees.

“I’m sorry, Dave,” she said, and to her credit, she sounded like she meant it.

“Is he cute?” he found himself saying, his mouth several steps ahead of his brain.

“I think he’s cute, yeah.”

“D’you think I’m cute?”

“Dave-” a note of warning entered her voice, but he babbled on.

“I mean, hey, if he’s a chef, maybe he’s into French stuff, like… Ménage à trois?” He was grasping, now, but to his surprise (and slight horror), she just quirked an eyebrow.

“Ménage à trois?” 

Oh, smeg. She actually sounded… Intrigued?

“I’m a modern kinda guy.” he said, affecting an air of playing it cool, while his adrenaline system kicked into overdrive and made his pulse flutter at a million miles an hour.

Now it was her turn to look him up and down, still in his supermarket uniform, cheap polyester trousers and a branded polo shirt, but with the ever-present biker boots (own shoes were allowed) and intricately customised leather jacket.

“Hm.”

“Is that a good hm or a bad hm?” His desperation was starting to leak through, but at least it was draining the levels of doom.

“I’ll ask Tim.” 

He waited for her to go, but she wasn’t going. An awkward pause ensued.

“Are you going to order?”

He honked an embarrassed, nervous laugh, placed the order, tried not to insert his entire fist in his mouth (though that was more a Rimmer coping mechanism oft deployed when Lister did something spectacularly dangerous in the kitchen, and - smeg, no, this was not what he was meant to be thinking about, Kochanski was _thinking about having a threesome with him holy shit_ ), swiped the beers as soon as humanly possible and scuttled off back to his table with the lads.

“That took a while,” smirked Petersen, downing half of his in one gulp.

“She’s thinking about it,” whispered Lister, faintly.

The boys exchanged looks, then burst out into a chorus of whooping and hollering as loud as a pack of howler monkeys on a stag do.

Lister couldn’t sit still the rest of the night, barely paying attention to the raucous banter around him, slowly slipping into an ever deeper state of drunken nervousness.

When the bell for last orders rang, he was up like a shot, making a beeline for the bar.

Krissie was there.

“Am I ordering a drown-your-sorrows kinda shot or a hell-yeah-let’s-party kinda shot?” she asked, slightly breathless.

She left him dangling for a minute in suspense, then her face split into a wide grin.

“Hell yeah. Let’s party.”

* * *

All he had to do was get in the door, scoop up a fresh uniform, hop in the shower, and get the hell out again. He could pretend he’d crashed at Petersen’s, and Rimmer would never have to know.

He’d refused Kristine and Tim’s offers of showering at theirs, because then he’d probably end up borrowing their clothes, and that was a whole other layer of weird he wasn’t quite ready for.

It had been a fun and certainly _interesting_ night, though he’d been slightly too drunk, and while a good time had been had all round (he thought - he hoped), he still just wanted to crawl out of there at the earliest opportunity, slithering off their very nice plush leather sofa he’d crashed on to scurry back home.

Technically, he had nothing to feel guilty about, but - there was a gnawing feeling of guilt nonetheless, so stealth was the order of the day. Or rather, the order of the morning. It was too early, and he felt like hell, but he had another shift to turn up for (idiot that he was, going for a session like that on a Monday, but carpe diem, seize life by the horns, and all that).

He fumbled for his key, opened the door with a soft click, and swung it open with a creak. Again, he thanked his stars that Rimmer lived in the top room and was also a fairly heavy sleeper in the mornings, so he didn’t expect any trouble.

Then again, he didn’t know that Arnold Rimmer had also passed out on a couch last night.

There was a sleepy burble from the direction of the living room, and Lister froze, midway through hauling off his boots. In his half-dead state, his reactions were about as good as a tranquilized sloth, and entirely unequipped to handle being interrupted while standing on one leg, and he toppled as if in slow-motion towards their antiquated coat stand.

Like the world’s worst domino chain, Lister’s fall caused it to tip over with a heavy clatter and a thud, Lister along with it.

There was a high pitched yelp from round the corner, turning into some kind of attack yodel, and Rimmer appeared, hair half on end, dressing gown askew, his arms raised in some kind of mock-karate pose, swiping at the air and yelling his best impersonation of a kung-fu movie from yesteryear.

Lister, much as he wanted to bury himself in the pile of coats and die, hauled himself up on his hands and knees, waving a placating hand out towards Rimmer.

“Sorry, man, s’only me.”

“Lister?” Rimmer exclaimed, hands still frozen in a comically threatening position. “...Lister.” He repeated, still coming to his senses, slowly lowering his hands before tentatively offering one to help Lister out.

Lister took it, got himself upright, and they stood there a second, holding hands as if for some photo op after signing a treaty, before they remembered themselves and stood apart.

“Why were you down here? It’s, like, 6am.” Lister asked.

“...Waiting for you to come home. I must’ve fallen asleep,” Rimmer admitted, unable to meet his eyes, one hand clutching the opposite bicep in a defensive gesture.

“Oh. Sorry, man.”

“Where were you?”

“Out with Petersen and the boys.” This time, it was Lister’s eyes that slid off to the side, unable to meet his housemate’s gaze.

“I see.”

“I crashed at his place,” Lister offered, hoping he wasn’t incriminating himself with too many details.

“I see.”

“Just popped back for a shower and a change.”

“I… see.” Rimmer leaned forward and took a sniff, impressive nostrils flaring at what they found. A curious expression stole over his face.

“Steady on,” joked Lister, in an attempt to add some levity, but Rimmer’s demeanour was rapidly turning frosty.

“Petersen wears perfume now, does he?” Rimmer jibed, and Lister could almost see the ice crystals in the air.

Oh, fuck. Fuck it all.

“It’s called cologne, actually.”

“Mmm.” Rimmer sniffed again, then frowned. “...Mmm, no, why can I smell both cologne and perfume?”

Oh, damn him, damn him and his overdeveloped olfactory senses.

They looked at each other for a minute, Lister unsure of how to explain himself. The silence must’ve been enough, and Lister watched the gears turn until something clicked in Rimmer’s head and his eyes widened in scandalized realisation.

“Lister! How could you!”

“C’mon, it’s not tha’-”

“You’ve been out, doing crimes?”

“It’s not a crime!”

“I beg to differ, miladdo! Going out? In the dead of night, slinking around-”

“It’s not that bad!”

“It is! It’s a menace to society! It’s absolutely despicable-”

“Shut up, Rimmer, I can do what I want-”

“I am not living with a criminal! It’ll be on the news, they’ll come round here, asking for a statement, asking how I could live with such a monster, such a lawbreaker -”

Lister snapped.

“Having a threesome is not illegal, Rimmer!”

Rimmer looked dumbfounded.

“...Having a threesome?” He repeated, timidly.

“Yeah, I had a threesome, alright?” Lister near shouted. “You should try it sometime!”

Rimmer looked blank.

“You mean… You weren’t out shoplifting?”

“What?”

“I thought… You’d been shoplifting from the perfume counter. And you’d spilled some of it on you. That’s why you smelled of… Both.”

Lister realised then that he’d made a horrible mistake.

“I’m not a thief, Rimmer!”

“Well, I didn’t think you were a… A philanderer, either!” There was the Rimmer Rage, kicking in at last, his face more screwed up than the receipts Rimmer kept stuffed in the kitchen drawers that Lister was nonetheless forbidden from throwing away.

“Well, least I’ve saved you a call to the cops, eh?” Lister ventured, trying gamely to deflect with humour.

“Shut up, Lister,” said Rimmer, but he just sounded utterly tired.

They stood there a minute, the awkward silence growing between them.

Lister, unable to take much more, took a step towards the stairs.

“I still need to shower.”

“Why break the habit of a lifetime?” said Rimmer snidely, and all his trademark bitterness was back in full force. Still, he moved aside, and Lister was able to escape upstairs and drown himself in hot water for a bit, washing himself mechanically as a lead weight of shame sunk claws into his chest.

He didn’t expect Rimmer to ambush him outside the bathroom but he still dove into his room in record time after, pacing round his room as he got dressed. A quick glance at the time said he was cutting it fine, so he hurried even more and practically bolted down the stairs.

Rimmer was in the kitchen, cradling a steaming mug of coffee, staring out of the window. Something made Lister pause, still.

“See you tonight?” 

“If there’s room in your busy schedule,” came the acid reply, and those invisible claws of guilt dug deeper.

Lister fled, walking faster and faster away from the house until he broke into a run, trying to outpace the feeling of regret.

* * *

Work was hell. Too tired even to trolley-scoot away from his problems, Lister spent most of it in a haze of too strong coffee and too many cigarettes. He wasn’t even cheered by the sight of Petersen, drifting round in a similar state but also sporting a huge black eye, presumably from some drunken brawl Lister hadn’t been around to bail him out of.

The hours crawled by as slow as a five-legged crab with arthritis, but the end of his shift still came sooner than he wanted it to. He would happily spend the next five or six years tied in a mouldy basement, poked by a toothless granny wearing nothing but fishnet stockings and canesten and he’d do it if it meant he could put off talking to Rimmer.

He lingered hopefully next to old Mrs Smith’s usual parking bay just in case, but she showed no more signs of wanting to kidnap him than before, so there was really no choice but to go home and face the music. The horrible, grating Hammond Organ music. 

As a peace offering, he decided to pick up their usual chippy order on the way home. Rimmer generally complained the whole time he delicately picked his way through his scamp and mushy peas, saying it was ‘food for proles’ or something else insufferably pretentious, but he was always the first to shuffle the menu to the top of the pile when they were thinking of getting takeaway while strenuously denying any kind of attempted sleight of hand. 

This also allowed Lister to kill a few more minutes while he distributed their fish, chips, and the full litre of curry sauce he always insisted on buying between the flimsy carrier bags they gave him at the shop, bemused as they always were. It also gave him an excuse for walking slowly - he knew Rimmer would be counting the minutes since his shift ended, probably wearing down the already too-thin carpet with his pacing.

Finally, he arrived. The curtains in their kitchen window twitched, so he knew he’d been seen, and Rimmer was probably dashing up the stairs so he could come down them nonchalantly at just the right time.

Fuck, he knew the guy too well. But, apparently, not well enough not to fuck everything up.

He carefully transferred both carrier bags to one hand before fiddling with his key in the lock, swinging the door inwards. To his slight surprise, Rimmer was not making a well-timed entrance down the stairs - once Lister crossed the threshold, he saw he was nervously fiddling with the position of a fork on the table, set perfectly around a fish supper the exact duplicate of the one Lister was currently juggling.

“Well, smeg,” Lister exclaimed softly, holding his bags up higher for Rimmer to see the familiar chippy logo. “No wonder they looked at me funny when I ordered.”

For a tense moment, neither of them were sure what to do, but once Lister cracked and started giggling, Rimmer did too. 

“It’s not - It’s not funny, Dave,” He wheezed, doubled over, limply brandishing a fork in Lister’s direction. “It’s a waste of - well, not _good_ food, but, but, edible food!”

“We’ll take it down the road, give it to a starving orphan or two,” Lister chuckled back, dumping his duplicate dinner on the counter to be dealt with later. Habitually he went to the fridge to crack open a lager, and waved one at Rimmer in a wordless offer.

He then almost dropped said lager in shock when Rimmer actually nodded ‘yes’ to it, and so Lister went to fetch glasses, because he knew that even if Rimmer was having a can he certainly wasn’t going to drink it from anything less than the proper vessel if he could help it.

Beers poured, seats sat in, they started to eat, neither quite wanting to break the unexpectedly light atmosphere with the lead balloon of a subject they knew they were there to discuss.

“So.” Said Rimmer, chasing down the word with a quick swig of beer and a grimace.

“So.” Parroted Lister.

“Chips alright?”

“Yes, Rimmer, the chips are great.”

“The, erm, curry sauce, is, uh, curried?”

“Yes, Rimmer. It’s curried.”

“Erm…” Rimmer squirmed a little more, then threw down his fork with a clatter in frustration. “Come on, Listy, I’m trying, here!”

“You are very trying,” Said Lister dryly, wetting his lips with a sip of lager.

“Oh, har-har. Alright. Fine. Have it your way.”

Rimmer scowled at the remaining scampi on his plate as if the force of his glare might reanimate them into some kind of battered barbershop quartet that could sing their way through this conversation for him. 

“I don’t know what to do, Dave.”

Lister almost choked on his mouthful, taken off guard by the sudden vulnerability in his housemate’s voice.

“I’ve tried - lord knows I’ve tried-” And while Lister’s skin reactively crawls a little at the whiny edge creeping in, he still holds his breath as Rimmer continues, near babbling. 

“I just wanted to make something. For you. Then you go and ruin it - and then you go and _kiss me back_ \- and I think maybe, actually, it’s not ruined, but then you… You go and ruin it again. And I don’t understand _why_.”

“Rimmer, I-”

“No, actually, I understand why. Why would anything go right for Arnold Rimmer? Old Arnie J? Everyone who ever met me has hated me. My parents. My brothers. My coworkers. You. The whole smegging universe hates me.”

“Rimmer-”

“No, no, quite alright!” His voice rose with his hysteria, his leg bouncing viciously on the floor as if trying to jackhammer its way to Australia. “Nothing _ever_ goes right for me, no matter how hard I try. God, I was even - I even got this card, from this man at the exhibition, you know?”

“You what?”

“This man - I think it was a man, honestly, despite the scarf and glasses you can tell he’s probably hat his head steamrolled once or twice in his life - came, he saw, he liked it, he gave me a card, said I should fly to Ontario to be his artist in residence or some smeg. Probably a scammer, honestly, it’s all coming clear to me now-”

“Rimmer, what card?”

Rimmer fished it out of his trouser pocket, handed it over. Lister stared at it.

“K. Ryten, CEO, Kry10 Industries.”

“Rimmer, this is… You know that guy who got super rich peddling household goods after a tragic childhood accident left him facially disfigured and unable to do anything other than telesales? That eccentric billionaire guy who now spends his time flying around the world looking for undiscovered art talent so he can mentor them until they’re also disgustingly rich and famous? That guy?”

“Oh. I might have heard of him.”

“It’s smegging Kryten, man, Kryten! He was at your smegging show!” Lister’s on his feet, shouting suddenly, overcome by too many emotions to process. Rimmer’s sitting in his chair like a sack of potatoes, or perhaps a soggy bag of unwanted chips.

“Oh. Oh _smeg_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sat on this chapter for a bit because I wasn't sure if it was too weird a turn for the story to take. Then I was all, to hell with it! On with the show!! Also a bit longer than usual because I didn't want to end on a total downer... Again. ;)  
> Hope you're all still with me! The payoff is coming... I swear..!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hihi! It's been a lil while! I got a little stuck with this chapter so it took a while, buuuut the good news is while stuck here I wrote half of the next chapter, so hopefully the resolution won't be too long coming..! Thanks for sticking with me, guys!

“You need to ring him, man, you need to ring him _right now_.”

“Do I? Do I have to?”

Rimmer looked down at the little business card pinched tentatively between his trembling fingers.

“Yes, you smegging have to! This is the opportunity of a lifetime, Rimmer! This is your ticket out of here!”

“But I-”

“No, no buts. You ring him,” Lister said, firmly - as much to stave off the cold dread he felt at what Rimmer might have been about to say as his conviction that Rimmer needs to _act_ , for once in his life.

“Right now?” Rimmer whimpered.

“Yes, why the hell not! Worst case, you get his answerphone, right?”

“Right,” said Rimmer faintly, drawing out his phone to stare pensively at it. He had to be one of the only people in the world still using a classic Nokia brick; the thing would never break, obviously, and Rimmer was far too tight to stop using anything that was still roughly in working order.

Lister let Rimmer stare at the phone for a solid minute before grumbling, “Give it here,” snatching it from him to punch in the numbers himself and set it ringing before shoving it back into Rimmer’s hands.

Rimmer, wide eyed in horror and trembling a little, held it up to his ear.

“Hello?” He squeaked.

A pause.

“No actually think this is a wrong number ok thank you, sorry, thank you, bye, ta-ta, sorry, bye,” he babbled and hung up.

“Rimmer, you useless something coward.”

“I know,” he groaned, cradling his head in his hands, “I know.”

“Was it him?”

“Yes. He’s probably blocked my number now, forever, my one chance, and I’ve smegged it up again-“

Lister rolled his eyes and hit redial.

“Hello, this is still Kryten speaking. I think you might have dialled the wrong number again, sir,” purred a distinctive Canadian accent from the other side of the phone.

“My apologies, guy, I have a chronically nervous cousin who just happened to snatch the phone from me as I was about to dial - my name’s David Lister, representing the artist Arnold Rimmer-“

“Oh, splendid! The up and coming artist with the delightful little show on Hastings seafront?”

“That’s the one, yeah. You liked it?”

“I loved it, sir!”

At this, Lister grinned and mouthed ‘he loved it!’ at the pale-faced Rimmer who was presently trying to chew clean through his fist in his anxiety.

“I’d really like to speak with him directly if he’s available,” Kryten continued, “Are you with him now?”

“I’m afraid he’s presently _indisposed_ , but I can pass on a message if you’d like?”

“Ask him how he feels about moving to Canada, please. I really think I’ve found my next artist in residence!”

“Brilliant. I’ll let him know. See ya,” Lister said, still smiling ear-to-ear.

“Goodnight, Mr Lister.”

There was a click as Kryten hung up, and Lister gently placed the Nokia back upon the table.

“How d’you feel about moving to Canada, smeghead?”

“Canada?”

“Canada.”

“Canada,” repeated Rimmer one last time, then he slid off his chair in a dead faint.

Lister considered hauling Rimmer up to his room and tucking him in his bed, but Lister had never been in Rimmer’s room and didn’t really fancy hauling him up two flights of stairs anyway. He settled for making him as comfortable as he could manage on the couch, even if his gangly legs dangled off the end.

Lister had, however, vastly overestimated how long people generally pass out for, and was not prepared for Rimmer to wiggle to life in his arms like an oversized and very panicked eel out of water.

“Woah, woah, hey, I was just helping you to the couch, I, hang on,” Lister garbled as he tried to keep Rimmer vaguely upright even as he thrashed about in his arms.

Eventually, Lister managed to let go in such a way that he wouldn’t just drop him back onto the floor, and Rimmer scuttled away to rest against the kitchen counter, chest heaving.

Lister held his hands up in a placating fashion and crooned soothingly, “It’s alright, you’re alright, calm down, alright?”

“I am perfectly calm,” Rimmer snapped back, even as he clutched a shaking hand over his heart and wheezed for breath. “Everything is fine.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Lister agreed, retaking his seat at the table and going for a steadying slurp of his remaining beer.

“Canada,” said Rimmer, once he’d regained some semblance of control.

“Yes,” said Lister.

“I could move to Canada?”

“Kryten seems keen, yeah.”

“Leave this all behind and… Canada?”

“Yep.”

“Just me?”

“I mean… I assume so.” Lister shrugged.

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you know, I… It’s a long way from here.” He finished, limply.

“You wanted to escape, right? Here’s your escape.”

“Yes, but…”

“No smegging buts, Rimmer! This is a golden chance and you’d be a sodding idiot not to take it!”

“But I _am_ an idiot,” Rimmer whispered. “A spineless, snivelling coward, with more clean underwear than vertebrae.”

“But you don’t have to be,” urged Lister. “You can change, man. You can do this.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Righty-o,” said Rimmer, still quiet, but firmer. “Canada.”

“You’ll call him and work it out?”

“Yes, yes, I’m a grown man, I can make a phone call,” Rimmer dismissed him, and Lister politely ignored that he’d been incapable of such a thing a scant ten minutes before.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow,” Rimmer snapped. “Now. That’s quite enough excitement for one evening. I’m going to bed,” he declared, standing abruptly. He hovered for a second, as if waiting for Lister to stop him - Lister didn’t, so he vanished upstairs, leaving Lister alone at the kitchen table.

* * *

It all happened way too fast. One minute, he was urging Rimmer to make a simple phone call. The next, he was watching Rimmer pack his bags, packing and repacking all his assorted detritus into cardboard boxes of wildly varying sizes scrounged by Lister from the supermarket.

Rimmer wasn’t even leaving until the new year but insisted on preparing well in advance, drafting and redrafting immaculately colour coded packing charts with neat little lists of exactly what went in each box. He kept changing the categories every other day and was redlining the entire system once a week, so Lister reckoned he might finally have his shit together by July.

Christmas Eve, Lister was sitting on the stairs cradling a mug of tea (the stairs, being fairly narrow anyway, were one of the few guaranteed box-free areas left), quietly observing Rimmer individually wrap each of his pieces of cutlery in bubble wrap.

“I think they’ll be fine, Rimmer. It’s all metal.”

“Metal can scratch too, you know! Especially if impacted by something of equal or harder density, which by definition includes other cutlery.”

“Yeah, but you’re not packing your head in there too, are you?”

“Har-de-har, Lister, har-de-har.”

“That’s the comeback you use when you know you don’t have a comeback,” Lister grinned into his mug.

“Well… Har-de-har, nonetheless.” Rimmer finished insulating his last teaspoon and set it lovingly down in the box, nestled with all its fellow implements.

“So, what’re you gonna eat with for the next week?” Lister chirped innocently.

Rimmer went quite still, gazing down into his impeccably organised and categorised parcel.

“...Bastard!” He yelled with sudden force, and kicked the box violently, sending padded cylinders skittering across the floor. Lister snorted into his tea, slopping it down himself, adding yet another miscellaneous layer of stain to his already well-textured t-shirt.

Rimmer then groaned, slowly inserted a fist into his mouth, and sunk to his knees, rocking slightly back and forth on the floor. Lister mopped up his spill as best he could (drying his shirt with more of his shirt, which didn’t really help, but felt like something) and tentatively got to his feet.

“You alright, man?”

Rimmer said something in a quiet voice that Lister missed.

“Sorry, what?” Lister asked, taking half a step forward.

Rimmer turned to face him.

“I said, are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“What? ...Wouldn’t that be a bit weird, Rimmer?”

“What’s weird about it?” He snapped.

“We’ve not even been housemates for that long, man. Packing up and moving halfway across the world is, like, spouse territory. I-love-you-forever-and-always territory.”

“Well,” Rimmer squirmed, “I thought maybe, given…”

Lister, as always when Rimmer brought up this kind of thing, felt the cold, clammy hands of dread grip him.

“Rimmer, man, it’s a bit much,” He said, as gently as he could. “Besides, I’m… I’m moving to London.”

Rimmer’s mouth dropped open.

“You what?”

“Yeah, I’m moving to London,” Lister said with as much confidence as he could given he had decided on this course of action precisely five seconds ago. “Gonna try my luck at busking.”

“You? Busking? For a living?”

“Well, maybe no super-billionaire has scouted next yet, but you’re not the only one that can give being a career artist a go, y’know. I have dreams, too.”

“But you’re terrible!” Exclaimed Rimmer with his customary lack of tact.

“Gee, thanks.”

“It’s a fact, Lister!”

“It is not! You just don’t appreciate true music, man.”

“Lister, even the mice here know to turn tail and run for the hills when you pick that thing up. I’ve had to adapt to sleeping with industrial noise-cancelling headphones on.”

“Well, thanks for being supportive,” Lister grumbled into his lap.

Rimmer wrung his hands together. “Well - maybe - maybe in London, there’ll be enough tasteless deaf idiots for you to get by.”

“Is that… Is that you being nice?”

“Yes. Happy Christmas.”

Lister let out a low whistle. “Blimey, mate, you really have changed.”

“No I haven’t. You just… Didn’t know me before.”

“If that’s the case, man, _nobody_ knows you. You and nice go together about as well as vampires and a sunny day in the Sahara.”

“Maybe nobody does know me,” Rimmer retorted, folding in on himself and looking away. “Nobody except you.”

Lister sat there in silence for a moment.

“I’m afraid there’s not going to be another you in Canada,” Rimmer admitted, to their fridge, because he still wouldn’t make eye contact. “And I’ll be back where I was before.”

“Except you won’t, because you’re there at the behest of a billionaire art connoisseur who thinks you’re Van Gogh’s second coming and wants to get you places in life.”

That made Rimmer turn to look at him, slapping a hand to the side of his head, wide-eyed in fear.

“You don’t think he’s expecting me to lose an ear, do you?”

It took maybe three seconds for them both to dissolve into helpless giggles, guffawing at the absurdity of it, then Lister knocked his nearly-but-not-quite-empty mug down the stairs, which just made it worse, the pair of them sobbing as they fought for kitchen towels and scrambled to wipe up the spill.

They both ended up slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs, breathless, giddy.

“I’m going to miss you,” said Rimmer.

“I’m gonna miss you too, man,” echoed Lister, surprising himself.

“Then why don’t you stop me?” Rimmer asked, and Lister almost forgot to breathe, his giggles abruptly stilled by the vulnerability in his voice.

“Because this’ll be good for you, Rimmer. A chance to be someone more than you think you can be,” he replied quietly.

They sat, silently, for a moment.

“How do you always see the best in people? Even me? I’m a bastard.”

“Even a bastard can do with a little hope. Especially a bastard, maybe.”

“...Are you really going to London?”

“Yeah,” Lister said, suddenly feeling like he meant it. “Stayin’ here wouldn’t feel right, and, hey, maybe I can use a little hope, too.”

There was something soft and mushy hanging in the air that hadn’t been there before. Lister felt a little sick, but he wasn’t sure if it was in a good way or a bad way. Glancing up, he saw some plastic mistletoe crudely taped above the stairwell. With a jolt, he realised he’d been the one to put it there - it’d been mixed in with the bargain bin decorations he’d scraped from the supermarket and had pinned it up without a second thought - waste not, want not, right?

Rimmer followed his gaze and saw it too, and went very still. His eyes flicked back down to meet Lister’s. The silence was deafening.

Rimmer leaned in.

Lister saw it as if in slow motion, time crawling to a stop, his heart stilling in his chest with it.

There was no universe in which he’d have the heart to push him away. This strange, lonely creature he shared a house with. Hell, he was lonely too.

So he leaned in, too.

They met in the middle, slowly, cautiously, like the first snow settling on the ground. Rimmer was shy, the touch of his lips on Lister’s just a whisper, but he was there, so close. Lister was suddenly acutely aware of his heat, his size, his solid presence, and, smeg, smeg, smeg, did he want this? This was _Rimmer_. This was his _housemate_.

There was no time to think; only time to act. Some deep and inexorable force drew him forward, and they kissed in earnest. Rimmer was initially slow, restrained, but quickly threw it to the wind, pressing urgently forward, chasing the warmth of Lister’s lips. Lister, still mired in his ambivalence, let him lead, let it happen.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a bad idea. The kiss was wet, and amateur, but, fuck, if this wasn’t the best antidote for feeling lost and alone on Christmas Eve.

So he let his hesitance thaw and float away, and started kissing back in earnest.

Some time later, when their various limbs started complaining about being subjected to the thin and scratchy carpet of their hallway for extended lengths of time, they pulled apart.

They sat, looking at each other, tousled, a little breathless.

“Come with me,” said Rimmer, his voice a quiet plea. “To Canada.”

“I can’t,” said Lister, strained, his head full of the sound and feeling of breaking glass.

Rimmer turned away, sniffed hard, then got to his feet, offering Lister a hand up. Lister, unsure of where this left them, took it nonetheless, blood rushing to his protesting legs.

They lingered, hands clasped, then reluctantly unlinked.

The air felt so cold, suddenly.

He was going to get used to feeling cold again.

* * *

They didn’t talk about it all through Christmas. They just carried on like normal. Sure, they snuggled a little closer under the horrible blanket, they cooked and ate their best attempt at a Traditional Christmas Meal together, they went for walks. They did everything they normally did just a little bit more, but still leaving the elephant in the room and firmly in the corner.

It was fine. It was going to be fine. As long as they didn’t think about it, or mention it, it would be fine. And Lister was fine with this. He was. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself, despite the gnawing hole in his chest. As he lay awake at night, staring at his ceiling, wondering if Arnold was doing the same (but maybe staring at his floor), he tried to figure it out. He didn’t even know if he wanted Rimmer to stay. He knew he didn’t want to go to Canada; didn’t want to be anyone’s second fiddle or hanger on while everyone fawned over Rimmer. He knew it would be good for Rimmer; he also knew it wouldn’t be good for him. Though he had little to his name, he still had some measure of pride, and he would make his own way in the world, damn it all.

Then there was the matter of what he actually felt for Rimmer, which slipped and slithered away from him every time he tried to pin it down. Rimmer was, objectively, an awful person to be around. But he was also just somehow… Endearing? Endearingly broken? Like a wilted plant, brown and withered, that would maybe one day grow into something greener and more pleasant with just a little water and sun and patience.

But Lister was no gardener. He was just a guy. He was just a guy who wanted a simple life. Thing with Rimmer were anything but. There were so many landmines and tripwires and tiny inconsequential things could set him off into days-long sulks and tiffs and spats and he constantly bit the hand that fed. Even if maybe one day he would grow into something softer, for now, he was still a creature of acid and barbed wire that might let you a little close, but would eventually snarl and hurt you still. Lister felt sorry for him, but… He owed staying to nobody.

So while he chased thoughts round his head like so many sheep, tossing and turning into the small hours, his waking days were full of forced normality. It was fine. He was fine.

New Year’s Eve. As is only right and proper, they got incredibly drunk and mumble-sang their way through Auld Lang Syne at midnight, and watched the fireworks, and honestly completely forgot about the midnight kiss until the fireworks were over and they were dividing the last of the festively-slightly-less-shit whiskey between them.

Their hands brushed as they fumbled when clinking their glasses together for a toast, and Lister shivered at the contact. He looked up into Rimmer’s eyes, knees knocking into his as he twisted on the couch, and saw Rimmer looking back at him.

“I’m leaving,” Rimmer proclaimed.

“I know,” said Lister, smiling at him, fond.  
“Last chance, Listy.” Rimmer nudged him gently with his shoulder.

“Oh, come on, man. I’m not goin’ to Canada to become your butler. You’ll be disgustingly rich and famous and successful without me. ‘Sides, I’ve already put the deposit down on a London flat, and they’ll bankrupt me if I pull out now.”

“You jus’ wanna get rid of me, right?”

“Sure, sure, this was all an elaborate plot to get outta living with you,” Lister rolled his eyes and drained his glass, chuckling.

“So it’s true? You just want to get rid of me?” Rimmer’s voice turned serious, accusatory, and Lister fumbled to correct.

“I was kiddin’, man! That was a joke. It’s what we do. We joke,” Lister frowned at him.

“It’s only because you pity me, isn’t it?” Rimmer slurred, and Lister’s drink-addled brain stalled as he tried to keep up with the jump in conversation.

“It what?”

“You didn’t mean any of it, did you?”

“Mean any of what, Rimmer?”

“The kisses. The support. The friendship. You just felt sorry for me.”

“Rimmer, where’s this coming from?”

“It doesn’t make sense, Lister. You make me fall in love then you tell me to fuck off and you don’t try to stop me. But you still kiss me and then pretend like nothing’s wrong. You don’t bring it up, you don’t want more. You just… I don’t know. You’re more afraid of commitment than a guy who won’t even hold hands with a lady without putting on three extra-thick condoms first.”

“Rimmer, I’m not doing this. Not now. I didn’t want to do this,” Lister pleads with him, desperately wishing he had at least two more bottles of whiskey for this conversation.

“No, Listy, out with it. What is this, for you?” Rimmer pressed, his eyes wild, more intense than Lister thinks he’s ever seen him. In all honesty, he was a little afraid, and he wiggled back as far as he could on the tiny sofa.

“Rimmer, you’re a mate. You’re a good mate. Probably my best mate. But, like, _romance_ , man... “ He floundered, fishing for the right words. “That’s something else.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with kissing me. _Twice_.” Rimmer retorted primly.

“Mate, _you_ kissed _me_. Forgive a guy for wanting some human contact - you haven’t exactly made getting it on with other people easy.” He’s getting heated, whiskey singing in his blood.

“Well, excuse me for wanting to get some sleep without having to listen to your squeaky bedsprings at all hours of the night-”

“Bet you wouldn’t mind being the one squeaking ‘em, huh?”

“Oh, now you want to get me into bed!”

“That wasn’t an offer, Rimmer!”

“Then what was it?!”

“An… An insult?”

“Ha! So even you think being willing to sleep with you is disgusting!”

“No, Rimmer, I-” Lister gave up on words and groaned into his hands, dragging them down his face, hoping to push some sense back into his brain. “Never mind me, what are you even doing here? Why are you trying to push this when all we needed to do was wave goodbye at the airport and fucking leave well enough alone?”

“Because I don’t want to leave it alone! I can’t! I can’t just fucking walk away!”

“You’ve gotta burn every bridge you leave behind?”

“I… I can’t help it!”

“You smegging can, you git. You just can’t live without tearing everything down around you. Good luck kicking that habit in Canada,” Lister sneered, and he already hated himself for it.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you!”

“No, really, fuck you! Fuck you for telling me to go but making it so hard to leave.” Rimmer huffed, turning away to face the wall.

“Well, then, let me make it easy,” Lister leered, and Rimmer cautiously turned back to face him.

Lister grinned dangerously, swaying forward, and he was perversely pleased when Rimmer actually flinched.

“This could be the best thing that ever happens to you if you don’t fuck it up. But you’re Arnold Rimmer. You fuck everything up. You fucked up running away from your parents, properly - it was still about them. You nearly fucked up even calling Kryten to take the smegging job in the first place. And now you’ve fucked up this, Rimmer. I was just trying to be your fucking friend because you don’t fucking have any, and now you’re fucking this up. So fuck off, Rimmer! Just fuck off to Canda and don’t look back, because I fucking won’t be!”  
Rimmer looked like he’d been shot, and Lister, panting, felt every bit like he’d just pulled the trigger.

Lister got to his feet, swaying a little.

“Guess I won’t see you in the morning. Have a good life, Rimmer,” He said, thickly.

He stomped up the stairs, shut himself in his room, and hoped Rimmer couldn’t hear the drink-stained tears he sobbed into his pillow, miserable beyond conscious reason.

Lister was right - he didn’t see Rimmer in the morning, who left quietly for trains and planes and his new life. Both thought it was going to be the last they’d say to each other; unresolved, an open wound.

They were wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No word of a lie, while I was writing the Sad Kiss Scene in the middle, I was idly chewing on some Love Hearts (idk how UK-specific those are but they're sweets with little messages printed on), and juuuuust as I was writing the kiss, the next sweet just had :'( on it and I think that's beautiful.
> 
> I know this fic has been real angst hours lately but I promise you, next chapter... Next chapter's gonna bring some healing. :)
> 
> Tbh most of my RD energy for the past month has gone towards wilding out over the Holly Hop fan reading auditions and good luck to anyone else who's applied!! All spare digits crossed for y'all!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!! After the last chapter I made some Life Choices and stayed up waaaaay too late getting this all down. Edited it on my lunch break and left it mostly untouched because hey, maybe it's a hot mess, but this entire fic has been a hot mess, and why stop now??
> 
> I think this thing is maybe spinning a little out of control BUT here we are, on the resolution arc!! This train is nearly at it's destination, baby! Choo choo, full speed ahead!! I hear that Lister has maybe come out a little badly of this story, but I hope that even if this chapter doesn't redeem him per se, it goes some way to correcting the balance... Enjoy!

A year on, Lister was finding London life was entirely as glamorous as Lister had any right to think it would be; which was, in fact, not glamorous at all.

For twice as much he was sharing a place half the size with three times as many problems as his (their? No, Rimmer was gone now, just call it his) little place in Hastings had had. It was decently well located, and given the rush he’d gotten it in (not even seeing it first, like an idiot - but he’d had something to prove, so he’d gone for it) he supposed it wasn’t bad.

His new flatmate was… An interesting character, to say the least, in wildly different ways than Rim- (no, don’t even think the name) ...His previous housemate had been.

“Hey, bud, where’s the milk?” Said new housemate grinned toothily at him from the doorway of Lister’s room, having pushed his way in without asking (he never asked).

“What milk?” Lister grumbled, looking up from his dog-eared notebook of half-finished lyrics.

“We’re out of milk! Why didn’t you get some more?”

“I didn’t know we were out; you didn’t ask.”

“Shoulda known, bud! Keep this up and I’ll have to raise your rent.”

“You don’t own this place either!”

Cat paused, and deflected by studying his already-immaculate nails, not deigning to respond. Lister pressed on.

“While we’re on the subject of not having things, what happened to that leftover chicken curry I was saving?”

“I ate it!”

“That was mine!”

“Mmm, no. My house, my mine. Everything here is mine.”

“That is categorically not how flatshares work.”

“It’s how this one works, buddy!” Cat flashed him a smile that was all sharp teeth and no mercy, and Lister figured he’d drop it. There was no getting through to this guy.

His new flatmate was, without a doubt, one of the strangest people Lister had ever met. He wasn’t entirely sure he was human, to be honest. He was gorgeous, slim, fit, dressed like Prince wished he could, insisted on only being called ‘Cat’ and rejected any possibility of any other name, and spent most of his time charming all female life within 100m relentlessly and with an annoyingly high degree of success. Lister had already lost count of the number of times he’d seen unfamiliar women - sometimes more than one - stumble out of Cat’s bedroom in the morning. Half the time they nicked his orange juice, and that wasn’t on.

The rest of his time was spent preening, occupying the bathroom for hours on end, and pestering Lister to do things for him. Lister wondered how this guy was seemingly able to keep up a very lavish lifestyle and still chose to live in this flat, which could very charitably be described as ‘a bit of a dump’. When asked, Cat just shrugged, and spat ‘London prices’ with a great deal of feeling. Lister understood.

He couldn’t figure out if this was better or worse than life with Rimmer. Rimmer had been controlling, petty, passive-aggressive to the hilt, stingy, cowardly and sabotaging. Cat had a much more relaxed attitude; money and individual ownership were foreign concepts to him, as were personal space, reasonable nighttime noise levels, and cleaning up after oneself. Lister found himself in the uncomfortable position of being the responsible adult of the household, and that was something he didn’t like one bit.

It had taken a little while, but Lister had some kind of lifestyle going. He’d pick up his guitar and wander round his local spots until he found a good one, set up, and start playing. He’d managed to make some friends in the local busking community who gave him some handy tips. For some reason, they always seemed desperate to play after him. At first, he thought this was because he was doing a good job, and they wanted to play to a warm crowd; after the fifth or sixth instance of a punter paying him more money than he could refuse to just shut the hell up, he started to suspect that they thought it was because their act would look much, much better in comparison.

Those were the good days. On the bad days, he’d just pick up a six pack or two of lager and hole up in his room, leaning out of the window and steadily working his way through as many cigarettes as he could afford. He told himself it was good to rest, good for the artistic juices; but deep down, he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone.

The very bad days were when he happened to stumble across some coverage of Mr. Kryten’s newest protege; the mysterious genius known only as ‘Ace’, churning out still life after still life of humdrum English seaside that the press were describing as ‘heartbreakingly melancholy’, ‘like a sonata played in oils and salt’, or ‘work that will make you both want to cry and eat a very greasy sandwich’. Lister wasn’t sure if it was praise, but it sounded like praise. He read them all, of course, and he hated that he read them all.

The day he saw the first billboard was the worst day of all.

It was a Tuesday. The day before had already been a bit of a shit day; he’d actually dragged himself out and attempted to busk, but on this occasion, even the pigeons had taken offence to his playing. He’d sat himself under a tree, struck the first chord, and found himself instantly coated in a layer of stinking, watery slime from the feathered tree rats above. Torn between laughing and crying, he’d mopped up his guitar as best he could and trudged straight home again.

Cat had been in the shower, so he’d just sat in the hall, stinking, for two or three hours, until he _finally_ finished up, only to look down at him, screw up his nose and exclaim, “Whatever your new cologne is, bud, it ain’t working for you!” before he flounced off. He showered, tossed his clothes in the washing machine, and wrote off the rest of the day.

Thus it was that he surfaced on that Tuesday feeling just a little bit the worse for wear, pulled open the curtains, and stared straight into Arnold Rimmer’s face, plastered ten metres high on the stupid fucking billboard across the street.

Lister drew the curtains again promptly and sat down on the bed, winded. For all he’d spent the past year trying to run from the shitty things he’d said, and done; there he was. Arnold Rimmer. Refusing to leave him alone.

“Smeg,” he breathed, trying to steady himself.

For all he’d tried to forget, he couldn’t. His lyrics were full of him; of guilt, of regret, of mistakes he wished he could take back. But there was no taking them back. He’d woken up in that empty house with the shittiest hangover of his life and listened to the quiet; while his memories were fuzzy, he had a feeling of dread settled in the pit of his stomach telling him that he’d done something more terrible than rot his insides with discount whiskey.

When it came back to him, he was halfway done sleepwalking through making tea, and the realisation had made him stop so abruptly he slopped boiling hot water down himself, scalding water soaking his ratty shirt and boxer shorts. He’d turn them off and sunk to the floor, curled up in the fetal position, sobbing at both the physical pain and knowing that despite all his thoughtless words calling Rimmer a fuck-up; he was the one that had truly fucked up.

Quiet time alone with himself became his worst enemy. He couldn’t stop compulsively replaying that night (and the ones leading up to it) in his head, chewing over the scenes again and again, the true magnitude of what he’d done haunting his every step. Rimmer - stupid, emotionally constipated, neurotic git that he was - had reached out to him with real and genuine feeling, and he’d shat all over it out of fear and confusion. He’d let his own feelings of loneliness get the better of him and led Rimmer on when he didn’t even know what he wanted, then pushed him away when it all got too much.

It didn’t matter that Canada was probably the best thing to ever happen to Arnold Rimmer; it mattered that Dave Lister was probably the worst.

He took a deep breath, went over to the window again, counted to three, and opened the curtains.

There he was. Arnold Rimmer. Now trading under the pseudonym of ‘Ace’, and wearing some ridiculous long blonde wig and sunglasses, but decidedly very much Arnold Rimmer. His portrait took up the left of the billboard; the rest filled with a decidedly familiar iron sea, but a new one, horses in foam, thunder streaking the sky above. It made Lister shiver.

Reading closer, he realised it was an advert for an upcoming exhibition - how nice. In London - very good. It was next month, and just up the road. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Maybe it’d been a year, but Lister was decidedly _not ready for this_. Well, sure, the chances of running into him were slim, miniscule; London was a very big place. But it was a hell of a lot closer than Canada, and that scared the shit out of him.

He very badly wanted a drink. More than that, he wanted a friend. But close friends were hard to find; Cat wasn’t going to be any good. His handful of busking buddies were just that; people he knew enough to comment on the weather with and swap tips, but nothing beyond that.

The next week was largely lost to pacing around his tiny room, drinking and smoking too much, scrawling ever more incoherent thoughts in his notebook, too shaky to go out and play. He felt like shit.

“You look like shit,” said the Cat, helpfully, wrinkling his nose at him from the doorway as Lister laid catatonic on the bed. “Smell like it too. Crack a window, bud! It smells worse in here than the back alley of a club at closing time, and I’ve smelled enough of those for a lifetime!”

“Go away, Cat. I’m moping,” Lister sounded exactly as pathetic as he felt, flopping a dismissive arm at his flatmate.

“You’ve been moping all week! Who’s gonna wash the dishes, hm? And we’re out of Crispies!”

“Get your own. Who did this stuff before I moved in, anyway?”

The Cat shrugged nonchalantly. “It’d just sort of happen. I’d get the girls to do it, but they’ve gotta walk past _your_ room to get to _mine_ , and one whiff of this place and they are out of here! Sort it out!”

With a last disgusted glance at Lister’s cesspit of a room, Cat span on his Cuban heels and shimmied out. Lister, even in his funk, realised he had a point. He couldn’t go on like this. He needed - as he dimly remembered telling someone about a year ago - to _fucking act_.

Much as he hated to admit it, the cleaning, the showering, and the consuming of an actual vegetable or two did miles to make him feel more human. Still the itchy feeling - and the billboard outside his window - remained.

He slept a restless night in his now mostly-clean room and woke up knowing exactly what he needed to do.

Without letting himself stop to think, he pulled on his least smeggy clothes and slipped out of the flat, bounding down the stairs. He unlocked his bike (locked only as a precaution - it was very much too shit to be stolen) and slowly set off pedalling towards Charing Cross, picking up steam as his burgeoning enthusiasm got the best of him.

The train ticket took most of his remaining cash; a problem for later. He wheeled his bike onto the train and took a seat next to it, staring out of the window as the scenery sped by, unable to stop fidgeting, to stop thinking, to stop hoping and waiting and dreaming.

He got off a stop early, wanting to truly arrive under his own power, take his time. He wheeled his bike off the train, up the North Trade Road; then realised he’d taken a wrong turn, and set his wheels firmly back on coasting down Hastings Road (with only a brief detour onto Marley Lane).

Despite it being mid-January, it was warming into a pleasantly sunny Winter’s day; cold, but not too cold. Bright, sharp. The trees and the hedgerows slipped past; it felt good to be moving. It was taking longer than he’d thought, but he didn’t mind; he felt like his head was finally clearing for the first time in a long time.

Before long, he hit familiar roads, the start of Hastings Town. He rode past the shops, houses and pubs he used to pass every day. He thought about going to stand outside his - hm, no, their - old house, but figured it wouldn’t do him much good, and kept going on towards the sea. He could smell it in the air; feel it in the wind. He pulled to a stop at the railings, and leant his bike and then himself on them, gazing out to sea.

This is where it all started to go wrong, really. That trip to the beach, the cafe, then the arcade after that. When Rimmer first started to move. Lister, like an idiot, had stayed blind.

He looked at the waves, listened to them slap at the shore, whisper along the rocks. The seagulls overhead wheeled and cried. Now he was no longer moving, the cold began to bite, and yet still, he didn’t move, lost in his thoughts. He knew there was nothing he could do. Even if he went to the exhibition (even if he could afford to), what could he say? What could he do? As much as he was torturing himself over what happened, he could only imagine it must be worse for Rimmer. He was the one that had been hurt; Lister had merely done the hurting.

At some point, he started to shiver, and he supposed he’d better move, lest he catch hypothermia or something. Hypothermia sounded bad. When he looked at his hands, he realised they were red-raw from cold, and numb, and barely functioning. Smeg, he really needed to get somewhere warm.

Off to his left, twinkling invitingly, were the lights of the Sovereign Light Cafe. He smiled to himself. It had been a long time since he saw the Hollies, and a friendly face or two was the other reason he’d travelled down.

He approached slowly, shuffling along, limbs half-frozen. He propped his bike up outside - locked it, out of habit - and headed in, the familiar twinkling of the bells over the door making him grin. Mr. Holly was sitting behind the counter, Ms. Holly beside him, chatting with a man in a long coat and a very conspicuous hat who was facing away from the door.

The Hollies looked at him, and he waved a cheerful greeting, unable to keep from grinning wider at seeing them.

“Dave?” They gasped in unison, their faces a twin picture of shock.

Then their gazes slipped immediately to the man, who was busy choking on his tea, wheezing for breath. The female Holly ran immediately to help him, alternately dabbing him with paper towels and slapping him uselessly on the back. The male Holly hovered between them, unable to decide whether to head towards the man or to Lister.

“Funny, this,” He smiled nervously, “You showing up, when-”

“Don’t!” Wheezed the stranger, a desperate arm extended to try and shut Holly up, and Lister froze in the doorway, a deeper cold than the one from outside stilling his movements.

He knew that voice.

He knew it better than anything. He heard that voice in his dreams, in his nightmares.

“...Rimmer?” He croaked, stepping forward half a pace and letting the door close behind him. The chimes jangled discordantly in the heavy silence.

“Mmm, no,” said the man, still turned away, suddenly gaining a heavy French accent. “Me thinks you ‘av, ‘ow you say, mistaken mon identité. I will, ah, be goin’ now, bonne day.” He tipped his head low over his face, turned up the collar of his coat, and attempted to scuttle past Lister and out of the door. Lister didn’t budge.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” He whispered, ever more sure he had not mistaken the identité of the person in front of him who was so desperately trying to run away.

Rimmer kept it up for about a second more, then deflated, snatching the hat off his head and gripping it tightly in front of him.

“Hi, Dave,” Rimmer said flatly, to the wall, still refusing to make eye contact. “Of smegging course I’d run into you here. The universe is a bitch.”

“Oi, no gendered insults in my cafe!” Admonished Ms. Holly from the counter, waving the dishcloth with which she was still mopping up from Rimmer’s spit take at them.

“Fine, Holly, the universe is a goit,” Rimmer rolled his eyes at her, and Lister marvelled at how much he seemed exactly like he remembered. Then he ran a hand through his curls - longer and wilder than Lister remembered, neatened his coat, and looked Lister directly in the eyes.

“Want some tea?” He asked curtly, striding over to their table by the window and shucking off his expensive-looking coat to place it haphazardly over the back of his chair where it trailed on the floor. He put his hat on the table and gazed out the window, not waiting for Lister’s response, merely assuming he’d come.

Looking at him there, tense as a coiled spring but commanding an aura of self-assurance he’d never seen on him, Lister suddenly realised he was not quite the same as the Rimmer he’d known after all. Taking in the neat black polo-neck, the tailored slacks, the fastidiously polished shoes; no, this Rimmer was different. This Rimmer was more. Lister gulped nervously, bobbed a nod at the Hollies, and slunk over to take his seat, feeling suddenly tatty and chastised.

“How’s London?” Rimmer asked, not taking his eyes off the window and the sea glinting in the distance.

“Good,” Lister lied. “How’s Canada?”

“Great,” said Rimmer, and Lister felt that he meant it. Rimmer turned to look him in the eyes and continued, succinctly, “Haven’t fucked it up yet.”

Lister winced. This was going to be exactly as difficult as he thought it might be.

“Why’re you here?” Rimmer asked.

“Because I feel like shit, and I wanted to go somewhere… Good.” Lister could only look at his hands. He tried deflecting. “Why’re you?”

“I have an exhibition. I’m here to prepare. Wanted to drop in on some _old friends_ while I’m at it,” he spared them a smile that was easier and warmer than Lister thought he could smile, then he turned back to Lister and drove the knife back in. “Didn’t expect to see _you_ here.”

“I know about the exhibition, man. Congratulations,” Lister hoped that Rimmer got that he meant it, even if he currently felt sick.

Rimmer looked at him a moment before cautiously saying, “...Thank you.”

“Is it all new or is there, um, some old stuff in it?”

“All new,” Rimmer answered quickly, “No… Previously exhibited works,” He added, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings. Lister got the implication. _‘Nothing with you in it.’_

“Right, right,” Lister struggled for words. “I… Write a lot, now. Song lyrics and stuff.”

Rimmer quirked an eyebrow at him. “But how could you ever hope to surpass the lyrical genius of the ‘Om’ song?”

Lister’s heart flopped a little at hearing Rimmer remembered, in equal parts joy and embarrassment.

“You were right that I’m smeggin’ awful at the guitar. People pay me to stop playing more than they pay me to continue,” Lister glanced up at Rimmer’s face to see his reaction, but there was none, just wary attention, him waiting to see where Lister was going with this. “Sometimes they say the lyrics aren’t bad, though, that I should drop the whole busking thing and do poetry.”

“Good for you?” Rimmer ventured, unimpressed.

“They’re about you, man.”

“Pardon?” Rimmer said, and Lister pressed on, having finally drawn a reaction out of him.

“The poems, they’re all full of guilt, and regret, and wishing I could’ve done better, that I wasn’t such a smeggin’ idiot who didn’t know what he wanted.”

Rimmer sat, and watched him.

“They’re about how much I wish I could say sorry. I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d ever get to tell you that.”

“Sorry for what, precisely?” Rimmer leaned forward, like a cat with a mouse. “Tell me what you’re sorry for.”

Part of Lister growled at that, rankled at having to justify himself, but he knew he owed Rimmer this; he needed to do this properly. He took a steadying breath, and continued.

“I’m sorry I treated you like shit. I’m sorry I didn’t take your feelings seriously, that I led you on, that I let you kiss me and-”

There was a rattling of saucers from next to them, and they both jumped. They sat in awkward silence as Holly set down mugs, a pot of tea, and two huge slices of cake at a leisurely pace, oblivious to her indelicate timing. She waited until they mumbled their thanks and then and only then did she retreat back to behind the counter, probably to eavesdrop with Mr. Holly.

Rimmer took a sip of his tea and gazed levelly at Lister over it.

“Go on,” He said.

“I’m sorry that I said all that shit to you about being a fuck-up. None of it was true. I was drunk, and I was scared, and I was confused. I knew you had to go away. I was - I was so angry that you kept clinging to me when I knew you had to go. I said that you burned bridges, but that, this - this was all me, pouring petrol on everything and smiling as I struck the match. It was fucked up, and I am so, so sorry.”

Rimmer sat and looked at him in silence.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I knew what your past was like; I knew what was up with you, and I still did it, still broke everything. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you, man. You went to Canada, you made good. Your work’s really, really good. I’d go see the exhibition if I wasn’t broke and scared of running into you.”

“Yet here you are, running into me anyway,” Rimmer spared him a wry smile, and Lister allowed himself a sliver of hope that things might be ok. He sat back in his chair and regarded Lister for a moment longer, mug cradled snugly in his slender fingers.

“You fucked me up, you know, Listy,” Rimmer said, quietly, and Lister felt that faint hope evaporate at the flinty edge in his voice. “I’d never fallen in love before. Not really. 28 years of age, and not a whisker of it. Then you come along and move into my house and invade my personal space and my personal things and share a ratty blanket with me while we watch shit TV, and - poof! There we have it. Emotional compromise, miladdo, in the flesh. I didn’t know what to do with myself. As you so eloquently put it, maybe the initial painting spell was an ‘ _insane stalker portrait project_ ’, but it wasn’t harming anyone, and I did it for _you_. Then you sit us down to talk about it but tell me I don’t know what I’m feeling and run away when I smegging well show you what I’m feeling. Then, instead of sorting _that_ out, you go and have _a smegging threesome_ while I wait up, assuming that given you were so keen to talk about the first incident, you’d want to come and sort out the second! I suppose I should thank you for pushing me into going to Canada, if only to get me away from you, you insufferable gurning baboon, who had the good grace to show me what you were really like just before I left.”

Rimmer paused, then, his face flushed with emotion, his previous air of forced calm twisted into one of simmering rage.

“To think I was so afraid that I would never find another you,” He scoffed. “Really, I should’ve been afraid that I would.”

Rimmer stabbed his cake viciously and chewed through a piece with feeling, as if he wished it was Lister’s face being mashed between his molars instead of Holly’s delightful Victoria sponge. Lister felt too ill to touch his, hot waves of shame flooding through him. He knew he deserved every bit of this; Rimmer’s assessment was eerily similar to the ones that had haunted his dreams for the past months, but it still cut him to the bone, and it didn’t make it any easier to hear.

Rimmer finished chewing and set down his fork, starting to speak again slowly.

“The worst part is, I _still_ can’t forget you. I still fucking think about you even though I know you’re a stupid lying bastard and I deserve better. Have had better, actually, thank-you-very-much, out in Canada. But they don’t know me. They know _Ace_ , the genius artisté, who knows when to smile and when to say, ‘oh, they’re not that good really’. They don’t know I’m just making it up. They don’t know that deep down, I’m a bastard too.”

“Is it really that deep down?” Lister jibes, and from the murderous look Rimmer shot him, he knew it was a mistake.

“You don’t get to make jokes like that,” Rimmer spat. “...Not yet.”

Lister takes comfort in the possibility of a future where he can make jokes like that, like they used to; but for now, he apologises.

“I’m sorry.” He offers, meekly. “For what it’s worth - I’ve not had another friend like you since.”

“Not found anyone to match my bastard-ness, you mean?” Rimmer sniped back.

“Not found one who knows me, Rimmer. Not like you do-” He stopped, and corrected himself. “..Did. Not like you did.”

Rimmer just nodded slowly, and took another bite of cake.

Lister decided to venture taking a bite of his. As he remembered, it was delicious; proper home baking, jam and buttercream too thick, sponge dense and sweet and tasting like home. He almost choked up at the taste; this long-awaited taste, on top of this whole conversation, being almost too much to take.

They ate in silence, words hanging heavy in the air. When they were done, they sat some more, staring out at night coming down on the sea.

Lister, as he remembered he didn’t own bike lights and that it was a long walk back to the station, stood to leave.

“I guess I’ll be going,” He said, limply, as Rimmer silently watched him put on his jacket. “Good luck with the exhibition. I’ll go and see it when I have the cash, but don’t worry; I’ll keep my distance. Um. All the best.”

He went to the counter, fumbling with his wallet for the coins, when Rimmer spoke.

“I’ve got it. I think I’ve got a few more pennies than you, squire.” He got to his feet as well and strode across the room, handing a flashy-looking credit card to Holly, who fumbled for the card machine. Then Rimmer dug out his phone - several generations newer than his own - opened the contacts, and handed it to Lister.

“Give me your number, or email, or address; whatever,” Rimmer commanded, as Lister stared at him dumbly. “If I want to get in touch, I will. But it’s _my_ decision, capiche? If I don’t want to talk to you, I won’t.”

Lister, too overwhelmed to say anything, just nodded dumbly and typed in all three for good measure. When he handed it back, Rimmer stared at it impassively for a second, then pocketed it again, along with his card from Holly.

“Well, er, I’ll be off. Nice seeing you, Holly, Holly,” He smiled at them as joyfully as he could muster (which wasn’t a lot, given his insides felt like they’d been turned into a pit of writhing eels), then turned back to Rimmer.

“See you, Arn,” He said, softly, and tried not to read too much into the various emotions that flickered across Rimmer’s face.

Then Lister turned, and he left, and pushed his old and squeaking bike away from the warmth and light of the Sovereign Light Cafe and began the long and lonely journey home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seem to just be writing a lot of arguments about feelings, but this one is at least hopefully constructive rather than destructive! Starting to see the benefits of proper story planning in advance but hey, I'm enjoying the ride, and I hope you are too!
> 
> I didn't expect to get the 'wow, I hate Lister' comments, but I think I was too close to see 'em coming. He's absolutely not been acting in good or healthy ways, but with this, he may start to. This is my first time writing these guys and I'm worried I might've gone pretty off base with the characterisation, but I hope the story works nonetheless! (Also RE: the comments, I'm honestly still just happy that people are invested enough to feel so strongly about it! I love hearing people's thoughts!!)
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me!! I see maybe one or two chapters left of this, so hold onto your hats; we'll get there. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone!! Thank you so much for the very kind comments on the last chapter - I hope this one brings some more hope for these two..!

Lister had a new routine.

It consisted of waking up, checking his texts, checking his emails, checking his texts again, before padding to the front door to check the mail. When he realises it’s too early for that, he sits in the kitchen where he can see the door while alternately refreshing his texts and emails. When the mail finally arrives, he dives upon it like a starving seagull on a dropped portion of chips. Then, when there’s nothing for him from Rimmer, he sits in various positions around the flat listlessly checking his texts and emails until night falls. Then, he goes to bed and swipes some more until he falls asleep, phone in hand, and refreshes messages in his sleep.

Cat was becoming ever more disturbed by his behaviour. At first, he left him to it; sometimes Lister actually did some light cleaning as a distraction, which was a marked improvement. Sure, said cleaning took him ten times as long as it should have because he would go and compulsively refresh his messages every five seconds, but as long as it was getting done, he was ok with this.

After a solid week of this, though, it was getting creepy. The girls he brought home, now less troubled by the smell, were weirded out by the ghostly presence to be found in dark corners, only lit by the light of his screen. Cat would dangle things in front of Lister, only to be batted away. Once, one of the girls offered Lister a friendly shoulder rub, and he’d practically teleported to the other side of the room in his haste to get away.

This needed to stop. Cat, for his part, sensed a game. One morning, he decided to crouch in the doorway of his room, just out of Lister’s line of sight, and join him in the wait for the postman. Minutes sloped by. Lister, unaware, refreshed his emails again in the kitchen.

When the letterbox rattled, the Cat pounced with every ounce of his unnaturally feline energy. Lister, not expecting competition, was caught completely off-guard, and scrambled desperately after him. Cat, of course, got to the door first and triumphantly snatched up the letters, holding them high above his head.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah! Got your post, monkey boy!” He crowed.

“Cat, give ‘em to me! I’m waiting for something important!” Lister fumed, swiping futilely at them as Cat continued to dangle them just out of reach.

Still holding them high in the air, he made a grand show of sorting through them, peering at them theatrically over Lister’s furiously grasping arms.

“Bills… You can have that one, dog-breath!” He grinned, tossing it over his shoulder, “Cills, more bills, voucher for £50 off wine, don’t mind if I do… Ooh! What’s this? A handwritten, personalised letter addressed to Mr. David Lister?”

As he looked down to gloat, he paused at the look on Lister’s face.

“Cat,” Lister said slowly, through firmly gritted teeth. “Give me that before I do something we’ll both regret.”

A flicker of doubt crossed the Cat’s mind at that point; but he was not really a creature of doubts, or fear, so he just grinned ever wider and fluttered it tauntingly above Lister’s head.

He was not quite expecting Lister to body slam him, tackling them both to the floor. They tussled together there on the grubby hallway carpet, Lister growling like a wild thing, Cat giving as good as he got and hanging on out of stupid pride.

Eventually, Lister managed to seize the letter in one grasping fist and pull it free; but the Cat did not let go. There was a sharp sound of tearing paper, and both looked mutely down at the letter half clasped in their respective hands.

Slowly, without speaking, Lister held out his hand for the other half. Cat, noting the tremble in Lister’s shoulders, the tension thrumming through his body, and the way he was carefully not looking him in the eye, sensed that he had well and truly crossed the line. He plastered on his brightest shit-eating grin and pressed the ripped papers in the outstretched palm.

“Sorry, bud!” He span a neat 180° on his heels and vanished into his bedroom. A dull scraping sound could be heard as he dragged something heavy in front of the door to barricade it for good measure.

Lister leaned heavily against the wall and sank to the floor, a sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach as he slid the sundered sheets from their respective envelope halves and held them together.

The nice card, the looping gold font, and the gallery logo in one corner; yes. This was what he had been waiting for. _Fuck_ his flatmate, he thought, trying not to have a full on breakdown as he fought back the tears.

He brought the two halves together in trembling hands. He already knew the details from the billboard haunting him outside his window, but he read them nonetheless.

“KRYTEN PRESENTS  
ACE RIMMER: DEBUT EXHIBITION  
ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS”

In one corner, mercilessly unripped, was penned in neat black biro a date and a time; February 14th, 7pm. Valentine’s day. That ironic bastard. Guess he already knew he wouldn’t have plans.

Lister took a deep breath, hauled himself up off the floor, and went to find some sellotape.

Now, at least, he had something to look forward to. Or dread. He hadn’t decided yet.

* * *

On the evening of February 14th, standing at the gates of the Royal Academy, he still hadn’t decided. He gazed up at the giant banners of Ace’s with a peculiar sense of queasiness; sure, maybe the glass of vindaloo sauce and two pints of lager he’d smashed before coming out weren’t helping, but they never usually bothered him.

He fingered the torn envelope in his jacket pocket like a lucky charm, the now worn-soft card stock soothing him, and joined the crowds ambling towards the entrance, feeling like a fish out of water; both for his clothes, and for his distinct single-ness. Everywhere he looked were neat pairs of neatly dressed humans, clinging doe-eyed to each other in the still-wintery chill.

The lady on the door raised an eyebrow at his taped-together invite, but mercifully didn’t say anything. He also felt a slightly undeserved flood of gratitude when she handed it back to him before waving him through and tucked it safely away again where he could rub it between thumb and forefinger, like some kind of textural mantra: lucky charm, lucky charm.

He’d known Rimmer had talent; seen his works in the magazines he couldn’t help but read. Despite knowing, it was another thing to see it in the flesh, to really feel the art. (Smeg, the poetry really was getting to him - a year ago he’d have scoffed at needing to ‘feel’ art. But, smeg, if it wasn’t true.) The canvases were so much bigger than he’d thought; huge, great things, taller than he was and wider than two of his armspans.

It was clear Rimmer had a style, and a theme; bleak, rolling seascapes. He never knew there were so many shades of grey; nor so many colours in grey. With so many just sea, he couldn’t tell where they were; Hastings? Canada? Some other far-flung shore, hazily reimagined as if the artist were washed up, shipwrecked and comatose? Still, familiarity clung to all of them. Despite the often bleak nature, Lister felt strangely at home.

He stood before one he was sure was a shot of Hastings; the bandstand on the pier, lashed with rain, a vivid orange-pink sunset sky behind. It was mesmerising. At that moment, he almost felt like he’d be happy to step into the oils, get drenched in freezing autumn rain and melt away.

“What do you think?”

Lister nearly jumped out of his skin at the quiet voice behind him, a confusing mixture of fear and relief jolting through him. He bit back the impulse to swear loudly and spun around to face Rimmer, willing his jangled nerves to calm so he’d have slightly more of a chance of not looking like an idiot. In fairness, it was probably too late for that.

He was slightly surprised to see Rimmer looking like - well, like Rimmer. Tight brown curls, no sunglasses, a thin polo neck jumper, slacks and a plain wool coat in a flattering cut that was probably worth more money than Lister had seen all year. He smelled distractingly nice, too. Lister both cursed and gave thanks to his ex-housemate’s newfound senses of wealth and taste. It was a far cry from the copy-paste M&S suits that Rimmer had lived in before.

“Shouldn’t you be blonde?” Lister said, fumbling for his wits.

“Ah, therein lies the genius of the Ace persona,” Rimmer answered smugly, tapping the side of his nose. “I’m only Ace when I want to be. The rest of the time, I hide in plain sight.”

“Still not exactly hiding the ‘I’m rich and successful’, though,” Lister countered, looking him up and down again with something he would’ve fiercely denied was envy but was definitely a close cousin. Rimmer almost preened at the attention, then remembered that this was Lister and Lister was a goit, and his pleased glow stuttered and flickered out.

“This is an Ace Rimmer art show,” He said, coldly. “Everyone here is rich and successful. Or freeloading.”

“Alright, _Ace_. You invited me, remember?”

“Yes, I did. You could’ve made more of an effort so as not to show me up, to be honest.”

“I thought this was a pretty good look, to be honest,” Lister snapped back, then looked down at his worn leather trousers, scuffed boots, much-loved jacket and an overly flashy shirt he’d guilt-tripped the Cat into letting him borrow after the whole ripped letter debacle. Sure, maybe it wasn’t gallery-smart, but it made him look pretty fucking good, actually. Barely any holes in, too.

Rimmer sniffed, “If you say so,” and swept his gaze impassively around the room, filled with art snobs cooing over his canvases. Lister followed his gaze.

“It’s fuckin’ great, man,” he said softly, prompting Rimmer to start slightly in surprise. “They’re all here for you. And they’re right to be, you know. Maybe I know smeg all about art, but I like ‘em, and obviously they do, too.”

Rimmer let the pause drag out for long enough to be awkward before simply saying, “Thanks.”

They stood in silence before a huge grey canvas, waves rolling under an endless cast-iron sky, punctured only by the very slimmest of god-rays punching through the clouds on the horizon. Centred in the middle of the piece, it looks almost like an alien abduction. When Lister squinted, he even thought he could see a tiny figure - maybe two - caught in that beam; but they could have been seagulls, or just errant flecks of paint. Rimmer saw him looking, and cleared his throat self-consciously.

“Did you see most of it already? I’m starving,” He said, bluntly, and Lister nodded.

“Yeah, I got round most of it. S’all really good.”

“Great. Wonderful. Great,” Gabbled Rimmer, staccato, suddenly seeming off balance. “I reserved a reservation on Greek Street. Let’s go.”

Lister, with a last look round at the bright, full gallery, and the collection of London’s hoi polloi fawning over huge canvases of Rimmer’s coastlines, just nodded and followed him out.

10 Greek Street didn’t look much from the outside, but inside was a snug and cosy establishment with the kind of minimalist rustic decor that smacks of being tastefully expensive. Lister took a look at the numbers on the menu and wished he hadn’t - anywhere that decides it doesn’t have time for decimals is trying to distract you from how big the numbers really were, in his opinion.

Rimmer caught him looking and smirked. “This is on me. Not all artists starve, you know.”

Lister rolled his eyes at him. “Alright, show-off.”

They lapsed into a not-quite-awkward silence; pretending to be reading the menu offered a plausible excuse, but once they’d ordered off the chipper Australian waitress, that excuse expired. Their drinks came and the waitress went; craft beer for Lister (the closest to lager they had), some unpronounceable red wine for Rimmer. They sat, and drank, neither quite willing to break the silence and speak first.

He examined and re-examined the decor; Rimmer seemed lost in some world on his own, his right leg thumping on the floor as it always had when he was on edge. The familiarity of the motion made Lister smile, and he hid it in his glass. Lister sipped his beer, figured he was sick of avoiding eye contact with Rimmer, and leaned forward.

“So. Tell me about Canada,” Lister said, leaning in. Rimmer jumped a little, tugged at the neck of his jumper, and licked his lips.

“Well. Um. It’s cold?” He offered.

“Come on, man, it’s been a year! Tell me about your successes in maple country, Big Man,” Lister grinned at him, the beer already loosening him up a little; a familiar social crutch.

“Don’t,” Rimmer winced, “Don’t chum up to me like that. I can’t stand it.”

“I’m not tryin’ to do anything; I wanna know. I wanna know how you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, what it’s like. I told you my half; tell me yours.”

Rimmer gave him a hard look, then relented, seeming to accept his sincerity.

“Alright,” He huffed. “It’s nice. Kryten’s got a whole complex out there; modern, swooping stuff, puts Falling Water to shame.”

“Falling what?”

“Oh. It’s a classical modern piece of… Nevermind. It’s a famous house somewhere,” Rimmer flapped his hand dismissively. “Basically, Kryten’s place is really nice. Like a spaceship, filled with all kinds of talented strays he’s picked up. Artists, musicians, poets, mimes…”

“Mimes?” Lister spluttered, hastily grabbing his napkin to wipe away the beer he’d dribbled in surprise.

“A surprisingly difficult performance art, actually, silent communication - one you could learn something from.” Rimmer said archly. Lister, naturally, sprang to an energetic and impassioned defence - soundlessly. Rimmer almost smiled.

At that moment, their food arrived, breaking the tenuous thread of conversation. When it looked like Rimmer was going to clam up again in favour of his plate of shellfish, Lister probed him again.

“So, like, what do you do there all day? Just kinda… Paint, all day, every day?”

Rimmer took a moment to swallow his mouthful, then dabbed delicately at his face with a napkin before speaking. “Yes and no. There was, of course, a lot of painting. When I got there I shut myself in my room and painted like my life depended on it, because, well - Kryten brought me there to paint, so I was bloody well going to paint, before they figured out I was a talentless fraud and sent me back to England, economy class. Kryten himself came round and hauled me out after nobody had seen me in a week, forced me to go outside and gently explained that there’s a lot more to art than just putting paint on a canvas.”

Lister, who had been listening, rapt, chewed over this latest information. “Erm… Like what?”

“Well,” Rimmer continued, gesturing with his fork, “There’s technique, and theory - colour, line, form, composition, material, texture - studying the great artists who came before you - Turner, Monet, Constable, Lorrain - then there’s, well, having something to paint. You can’t just paint by yourself in a dark room and expect it not to be absolute garbage.”

Lister nodded slowly. This was a side of Rimmer he’d rarely seen, if at all - sharing something he was passionate about, but with none of the arrogance and scorn with which he usually imparted his specialist knowledge (“you gibbering half-wit, what do you mean you don’t know the difference between a British and an American telegraph pole?”). He almost dared not speak, lest he cause Rimmer’s shutters to come crashing down again.

After a short pause, Rimmer spoke again, unbidden. “Mingling was strongly encouraged. The sharing of ideas, the sparking of new ones, etcetera etcetera.”

“How was that?”

“Terrible. Awful. Hated it. Incredibly useful, though.”

“How’d you cope?”

“I made Ace,” Rimmer said simply, with a shrug. “Then things got a lot easier.”

“Fake it ‘til you make it,” Lister said quietly, and Rimmer raised his glass to that and took a large gulp of wine.

The conversation trickled more easily, after that, helped along by the excellent food and steady supply of drinks - Lister asking, Rimmer answering, filling in a picture of the life he had over there. It sounded too good to be true - so far removed from reality that Lister couldn’t even really be jealous. It would be like being jealous of a nice dream someone had, once, though the truth of it was plain in front of him in Rimmer’s designer clothes and newly assured attitude.

He could barely believe some of the names Rimmer carelessly dropped into conversation; the great and good of the arts and entertainment world, stopping by Kryten’s wonderland for afternoon tea. He saw the little flicker of Rimmer’s eyes each time he did so, though - the search for approval, for awe. The only name he mentioned with a trace of bashfulness was one Nirvanah Crane; Lister made a mental note to press him on that later.

After dinner, quite sated and merry, they stumbled, blinking, out into the street. Lister heaved a deep lungful of the sharp winter air perfumed with the unique stench of a busy night in Soho. He looked, dimly, from left to right, then perked up as strains of jazz hit his ears.

Loosened up from the wine, he didn’t hesitate at all to grab Rimmer’s arm and drag him towards the bar, grinning from ear to ear.

“C’mon, I’ve ‘eard of this place! Let’s give it a look!”

Rimmer, to both their surprise, barely grumbled, and let himself be led inside the tiny jazz bar, lit warmly with red light and snug with swaying patrons, nodding along to the house band. Lister handed over a couple of crumpled fivers for the entry and disappeared into the throngs around the bar, leaving Rimmer standing awkwardly just inside the threshold, feeling thoroughly out of place. After an indeterminate period of time, in which Rimmer had contemplated at least five methods of escape, Lister reappeared with a brightly coloured cocktail in each hand and a grin wider than the English channel.

They clinked the glasses together and Rimmer took a too-big sip, wincing at the sourness before he took another, smaller, more appreciative sip, surprised by Lister’s choice. When he looked up, Lister had vanished again, and he hastened to push his way through the people packing the bar in pursuit.

Lister had somehow found a tiny booth wedged in an implausibly tight corner and they both squeezed in, knees knocking together as they wiggled to find a fit. Lister beamed over at the musicians, bobbing his head in time to the music. He sat, pleasantly drunk, enraptured by the music, and only turned back to the table when the song ended and the musicians paused for a break. When he looked back, he nearly jumped when he saw Rimmer just sitting and looking at him, an unfamiliar pensive expression on his face.

“What do you think?” Lister asked, raising his voice to be heard amongst the thrum of conversation.

“Surprisingly tuneful, given what I know of your music taste,” Rimmer said archly, sipping his drink, but there’s less acid in the jibe than Lister would’ve come to expect.

“Hey, man, I just like anything with soul. With feeling,” He added, draining the last of his cocktail, the alcohol buzzing pleasantly in his veins.

“Hmph. A kind of feeling you don’t run from. Will wonders never cease,” Muttered Rimmer into his glass, likewise empty.

Ah. So it was that stage of the evening. He remembered now Rimmer’s stages of drunkenness; the first, he got a little louder, a little funnier, his frequent insults zinging comedically more than cruelly. Second, a pleasant softening of his personality that relaxed him into someone approaching normal; fuzzier, warmer, more loquacious. Third, a rapid and harsh backslide into the boiling mess of neuroses, snark and self-loathing that constantly lurked just below the surface of his consciousness.

Lister inhaled wearily through his nose, and exhaled in a small, sharp sigh. “Listen, I don’t have any money for therapy, but I’ve got enough for a notepad, and - and I’ve spent the past year trying and smeggin’ failing to forget, and, I definitely haven’t worked through everything, and I probably never will, but I’ve made a start, and… I hope it’s a start worth something.”

Rimmer stared at him levelly from across the cramped booth, then groaned loudly and drained the rest of his drink.

“Fuck you,” He said, sinking down in his seat until his forehead rested against the table. “You make everything sounds so smegging… Smegging… Good! Plausible! Possible!”

“Maybe it can be!” Lister leant forward, suddenly manic with hope, and placed a hand over Rimmer’s, next to him on the booth seat. Rimmer didn’t move.

Rimmer mumbled something into the table, too quiet to be heard above the hum of the bar. He stirred, slid his hand out from Lister’s, and lurched upright to look Lister in the eyes, somewhat blearily.

“How do I know you won’t leave again?”

“I didn’t leave! You did!”

“You left… Emotionally,” Rimmer waved an accusatory finger at him. “I merely left physically.”

“Alright, alright, can we just… Cool it with the accusations?”

Rimmer’s eyes narrowed. “It’s true, though.”

“Sure, sure, but how much do you want me to grovel before we get past it? I’ve said sorry, I’ve laid out in painful bloody detail where I went wrong, and playing the blame game isn’t gonna get us anywhere.”

“It’s your fault, though.”

“Yes, Rimmer, some of it! A lot of it! But we can’t move on until you let us move on, alright? It’s not like it was all me, either.”

“Oh, that’s rich! Dump it all on ol’ Arnie! You - broke - me!” He punctuated each word with a stab of his still-pointed finger.

“Yeah, Arn, and you let me! You weren’t gonna stop pressuring me to go with you. Like, the way I did it was fucked up, I get that, but it’s not like it came outta _nowhere_. Like, if you want this to work, like, really work - we’ve both gotta admit when we mess up.

Rimmer sat in enraged silence, nostrils flared indignantly.

“I’m doin’ my best to get better, be better. This won’t work if it’s just me, though, like - I know you’re doin’ better, in your new life, and that, but, like, that won’t change who you really are. You can get a big house and a faster car, but, like, if you just run away from yourself… You won’t get far.”

“You really have been practicing poetry, hm?” Rimmer said archly, lips pressed in a thin line. “And you use it to accuse me?”

“I’m not - I’m not tryin’ to accuse you of anything! I’m just saying this has gotta be a two way street!”

Rimmer held his gaze for a moment or two longer, then deflated.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was the screw-up all along.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say either! I’m saying - we both have and will mess up! And then we can both own up to what we did! Then we resolve to do better next time, and get on with life! None of this guilt smeg, none of this all-or-nothing black-and-white thinking, alright? It’s all… Shades of grey.”

They looked at each other, then Lister dissolved into giggles.

“Fifty… Fifty shades of grey.”

Rimmer rolled his eyes, shook his head, and left to go get more alcohol.

When he got back, there was someone else leaning over their table, Lister smiling and laughing with her as she pushed vividly dyed red hair back out of her eyes and tucked it behind an ear.

He didn’t drop their glasses, but it was a close thing.

Lister saw from the corner of his eye Rimmer’s stricken, twisted face, caught him vanish into the crowd and weave to the direction of the door. He gabbled some apology to his new friend, grabbed their coats, and sprinted out of the bar like a man possessed.

He made it, gasping, into the cold night air, saw Rimmer’s hunched shoulders, clad in just his shirt, striding determinedly away a few metres down the street.

He yelled. “Rimmer! Rimmer!”

Rimmer faltered but didn’t stop as he kept walking. Lister swore softly under his breath and jogged to catch up, bundling the coats under one arm.

“Hey, man, c’mon, don’t turn your back on me, don’t walk away,” Lister reached out and grabbed Rimmer’s wrist, finally causing him to stop. “I’m a better man now than I was back then; that was just a fellow poet saying hello, alright?”

Rimmer whirled round and snatched back his wrist and cradled it against his chest, shiving slightly. Lister juggled the coats and held Rimmer’s out to him, then pressed on, “Come on, man. Give us another chance?”

Rimmer stood stock-still, painted by the bright lights of Soho as if he’d stepped out of a picture frame in a nearby gallery. His face was shadowed, making his wary gaze all the more intense. He took back his coat and put it on, wrapping it tightly around himself.

Finally, cautiously, Rimmer spoke.

“As what?”

“As a friend, Rimmer. As a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

“Rimmer, I…” Lister trailed off as he paused to find the right words. “I don’t think I could promise that right now. The last thing I wanna do is lead you on again. But!” He added hastily, as Rimmer’s features tightened again. “But I’d never call you ‘just’ a friend, Rimmer. I wouldn’t have spent the past year being fucked up over this if you weren’t pretty smeggin’ important to me, man.”

Slowly, Rimmer melted; his defensive scowl slipped away, his shoulders unwound themselves from their tense hunch and his hands dropped loosely to hang at his sides. He tilted his head back, breathed deeply of the night air, and looked Lister in the eye.

“Fine. Yes. Fine, you bastard.”

“Yes?”

“Yes! Don’t make me say it again, or I’ll reconsider.”

Lister beamed guilelessly at him, a rush of giddy joy plastering a goofy grin across his face. He opened his arms wide and took a step forward, as Rimmer took one back in alarm.

“What are you doing?” He squeaked.

“C’mon, man, it’s been a long year. I’m not letting us not hug this out.”

Despite Rimmer’s protests, Lister swooped in to wrap him in a bear hug. He was so warm; solid, firm, a ghost made real. He smelled of a new and more expensive aftershave than whatever he’d been using before, and Lister inhaled gleefully, more drunk on this than anything they’d consumed at the bar. After a while, Rimmer relaxed into it, tentatively patting Lister on the back as much as his pinned arms would allow.

They stood like that in the glow of the night for longer than was strictly appropriate, but both were too far gone to care much. When they broke apart, they were both slightly flushed, though neither had done much to warrant it.

“I’m flying back at the end of the week,” said Rimmer softly. “Can we meet again before then?”

“I’m free when you’re free,” Lister chirped back, still beaming his hamster-cheeked grin.

“Tomorrow?”

“Suits me. Let me know, yeah?”

“Naturellement.”

“Well. See you tomorrow, Arn?”

“Indeedy. Well. Splendido. I, erm, I’d better be off.”

“Bye.”

They smiled awkwardly at each other for a moment more, then both attempted to leave in the same direction. They laughed, gave up, and weaved their way to the tube together, shoulders brushing as they made their ways home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by the two thoughts 'gee I wish I was good at landscape painting' and also 'oh no I miss Soho a lot actually'.
> 
> I have also just resorted to slipping in large chunks of song lyrics as dialogue because what else is the point of songfic, really??
> 
> While writing I ended up looking briefly at 20th Century Telephone poles to see if there was a really zingy reference I could slide in but I only got as far as this page; but it's pretty wonderful, so I'm going to share it. Who knew telegraph pole appreciators were this funny, eh?  
> https://www.telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org/whence-they-came/


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here, everyone!! Thank you all for your patience!
> 
> As ever, apologies to any places mentioned for my very loose interpretation of geography, and thank you, as ever, for reading!

Rimmer squinted dubiously down at him.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

Lister dropped the loc he’d been absentmindedly chewing on from his mouth and answered peevishly, “For the last time, yes, I’m sure! What makes you think I’m not sure? I’m more sure than an entire Boots’ worth of deodorant, that’s how Sure I am.”

“Don’t act like you know what deodorant is,” scoffed Rimmer. “Lister, you’ve not managed to sit still at all since we got here. You’re wrigglier than a bunch of worms at an orgy. If you're like this on the plane, I’m throwing you out of the door myself.”

Lister paled. “You can do that? Open the door mid flight and throw people out?”

“If you elbow me and disrupt my in-flight entertainment plan, believe me, I will find a way.” Rimmer paused at the look of genuine fear on Lister’s face, and relented. “No, of course you can’t open the door. It’d suck all the air out, or let birds in, or... Something.”

Lister didn’t look all that reassured and resumed fidgeting in his seat, the cheap plasticky pleather of the departure gate seat squeaking uncomfortably beneath him. At this moment, something dawned on Rimmer.

“Wait a minute… You have flown in an aeroplane before, yes?”

“No,” moaned Lister. “I am _not_ looking forward to being trapped in a confined metal cylinder hurtling through the sky for nine hours.”

“Ten,” corrected Rimmer, helpfully. “It’s not so bad. They have in flight movies, music, games. There’s even some Reggie Wilson.”

Lister only groaned in response.

“I can pick up a travel version of Risk?”

Lister just groaned louder. Rimmer rolled his eyes.

“Listen; worst comes to worst, just pick up the in flight magazine. That’ll sort you out.”

“Why? ...Is it really good?”

“Terrible. It’ll knock you out for hours. Assuming you can read, that is.”

Lister sunk even deeper in his seat and chanted under his breath, “It’s just nine hours… Just nine hours… Just nine hours…”

“Ten!” Rimmer chirruped sweetly, taking a seat beside him.

Not for the first time, Lister wondered if he really was sure. But… It’s not like he had the money for the return fare, and his precious guitar was already sealed and in the hold and bound for Canada with or without him, so - that was it. He was going. Canada.

Rimmer had emailed the morning after their dinner in Soho, mentioning in overly-casual and roundabout terms that he would maybe be free at around precisely 2:47pm on Wednesday afternoon and if he wanted to, if it wasn’t too much trouble, Lister was to take him to a ‘coffee house or emporium’ and Lister got two things from this. One, that Rimmer really needed to be taken to the most archetypical dodgy-looking-London-caf-that’s-actually-great he could think of, and Two, that the engagement was really not optional at all. Not that he particularly wanted it to be.

So it was that they had met at the café just up the road from Lister’s flat, and from the way Rimmer grimaced in disgust and whined “I thought I said an _emporium_ ”, Lister knew he’d made an excellent choice. After just a little bit of cajoling, Lister managed to get Rimmer over the threshold. The owner, Os, beamed at them as they came in, welcoming Lister as if he were a brother and not merely an occasional visitor that generally just ordered the cheapest thing going, and settled them cosily in a corner.

Lister stifled a smirk at Rimmer’s suspicious glaring at the mysterious spots on the table and the plastic ivy branches that’d seen better days and merely pushed the menu at him, pointing out which specials were good. (It was rare that Lister had ever had the money for them - only ordering after finding a dropped tenner on a station platform or when Os figured he looked particularly pathetic and needed something extra - but, damn, Os really knew how to make a breakfast.)

Rimmer made some attempt to protest that 3pm was not the time to be eating a full English, and Lister countered that they were ‘all day breakfasts’ for a reason and that meant any time was good, and really, when was not a good time to stuff your arteries full of grease and butter? Despite his whinging, Rimmer said nothing as Lister ordered them two Os Specials with coffee and orange juice.

They made idle small talk as they waited - how was the hotel, isn’t the weather shit, can you believe three separate members of London’s elite wanted to commission portraits in the nude - and largely shut up in appreciation of the excellent breakfasts and hot Turkish coffee that even Rimmer had to admit was sublime. As Lister was mopping up the last of his beans with the crusts of his buttered toast, Rimmer suddenly started looking nervous, leg jiggling a rat-a-tat-tat on the floor under the table.

Lister noticed, and said around a mouthful, “Go on, spit it out.”

Rimmer scowled and characteristically snapped back, “I’m not the one in danger of dribbling on the table, Listy,” but he did then still himself and looked almost contrite. “I’ve been talking to Kryten,” He continued, a little tentative.

Lister swallowed. “...Good?” He ventured.

“About you,” Rimmer clarified.

“Oh?”

“I, um, have occasionally mentioned you to him. I mean, naturally, given the nature of my… Early works.” He couldn’t quite make eye contact, and Lister felt a little prickle of guilt still. “I mentioned that we had, ah, reconnected over here. That you’d been writing, taking up poetry. He… If you wanted to, you could send him some samples, come and meet him, and then maybeyoucouldmovetoCanadawithme.”

Lister just stared at him, open-mouthed, unsure if he’d understood what Rimmer had just garbled at him.

“Sorry, man, one more time?”

Rimmer was flushed furiously by now, highly embarrassed at having to repeat himself, and spat, “You could move to Canada with me, you git.”

Lister sat there, stunned.

“Wow.”

“Forget it, forget it, it was a stupid idea, I’ll tell that jumped up vacuum cleaner salesman it was stupid, I-”

“Rimmer, Rimmer, shut up,” Lister said, sorely tempted to clamp a hand over the other man’s mouth to stop his self-deprecating garbage and instead settling for waving his hands uselessly halfway over the table. “I just - wow, that’s a lot to take in.”

Rimmer, mercifully, did shut up, and glowered at him with something between anger and fear.

“You did that for me?”

“I didn’t do anything for you, you half-baked mollusc, I just… Mentioned some things.”

“But, like - you’d be ok with that? With me being over there?”

Rimmer heaved a very heavily affected shrug and looked away, feigning indifference. “It wouldn’t be anything I hadn’t endured before.”

“But… Do you want me over there?”

Rimmer snapped his gaze back to Lister and dodged the question.

“Do you want to go?”

Lister couldn’t answer right away. He looked down at the table, hoping to find some meaning in the smears of sauce on his plate, in the innumerable ring-shaped stains of coffee spills past on the table, and tried to think about it properly.

Last time Rimmer had asked him this, he’d turned him down - too scared of his feelings, yes, but also scared for what it meant for his own life, to be hanging on Rimmer’s coattails, forever indebted to him, too weak to stand on his own, a trophy wife or an emotional support animal. Just some guy standing next to the real talent. While Lister got by on bravado, claiming he was God’s gift to guitar and charm and beauty, there was only so far he could stretch it. In Canada, he’d really be nobody, kept on at Rimmer’s behest. At least in London, he was nobody on his own terms.

“Well?”

“Can it, Rimmer, I’m thinking.”

“If you have to think about it, you can’t really want to-”

“No, Rimmer, it means I’m takin’ it seriously. Gimme a moment, OK?”

Rimmer huffed but lapsed back into blessed silence, and Lister picked up his dropped train of thought again.

What did he really have going for him in London, anyway? A handful of friends, a handful of haunts, people he was fond of, who were probably fond of him, but - nobody that close, really. His flatmate was a self-absorbed narcissist who would only notice he was gone because he’d stopped buying milk. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really talked to someone about anything real, and certainly not when he’d done so sober. For all his flaws, for all their fuckups, Rimmer - Rimmer knew him. Rimmer saw him. Rimmer knew exactly how much of a piece of shit he was and still stuck around, and Lister did the same for him. He missed the fights, the long walks after, the disastrous attempts at cooking, the late night ramblings over cheap paint-stripper whiskey, the sheer domesticity of it all. He missed knowing there was someone who gave a tiny bit of a shit about him, who was waiting for him at home.

Shit. That all sounded a bit… Married-couple-y, didn’t it? Lister wasn’t particularly bothered about labelling relationships, but… He knew people who lived together like ghosts, brushing past in the hall, barely a feather-touch on each other’s lives. But despite everything, Lister and Rimmer worked together. They were good together, even if it looked like they were terrible. Like coconut in naan, or bananas in curry. Weird, but workable.

What was there to think about, really? He’d spent the last year moping, and here was a golden chance at redemption. A chance to do something. Kryten even wanted to actually look at his poetry, first - like, maybe he could even be there because he was good at something that wasn’t just handling Rimmer.

“Yeah,” He said, quite before he realised he was doing so. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“You will?” Rimmer squeaked, looking for all the world like Lister had just spontaneously grown breasts.

“If Kryten likes my stuff, yeah, yeah, I’ll give it a go.”

“Well. Alrighty then. Jolly good. Pip and dandy,” Rimmer said faintly, looking like he might pass out, but he was smiling. Despite how much he looked like he was trying to hide it - he was smiling. Lister was too. They grinned at each other like idiots in that tiny cafe by King’s Cross and ordered dessert.

So it was that they came to be sitting side-by-side at a Heathrow departure gate with all of Lister’s worldly possessions shoved in his backpack, waiting to start over again. Kryten said his poetry showed promise - was raw, and uncompromising, and vital, and a bunch of other words that sounded like things people said about poetry when they liked it, or at least wanted to sound like they did. Lister had no idea whether he was lying; Kryten claimed he was unable to, and though that sounded like a pile of smeg, it gave Lister the all-clear to move in.

* * *

When they stumbled out into Toronto’s arrivals lounge at some ungodly hour of the morning (or night, or day - time zones being inscrutable), they could only be very charitably described as ‘awake’ or ‘alive’. Lister’s tattered backpack half hung off his shoulders and he clutched his precious guitar in a death grip as if it were the only thing still tethering him to the mortal plane. Rimmer was faring slightly better, wheeling his matching two-piece luggage set behind him and only very occasionally bumping into an errant barrier post or two.

“Mr. Rimmer, sir! Over here!” called a voice altogether too cheery for whatever time it was, and Lister and Rimmer both blearily looked over to see a large handwritten sign that said, “KRYTEN WELCOMES MR RIMMER AND MR LISTER HOME”. The sign was being waved by a trim young lady in an immaculate driver’s uniform (with white gloves and everything) who promptly bounded over to meet them, seemingly immune to the curious stares of their fellow travellers.

Rimmer’s posture immediately improved by about twenty degrees as he straightened up and plastered a smarmy smile on his face, picking up the pace to stride over and meet their greeter halfway. Lister, too tired to do anything but gawp at the sudden change, trailed after him.

“Tracey! Good to see you, chum,” Rimmer said, voice suddenly two octaves deeper and three times as plummy, sweeping her into a bracing hug as best he could around the oversized sign. Once freed from his embrace, Tracey leaned round him to grin at Lister.

“Hi. You must be Dave!”

“Yep, hi. I’m Dave,” He said, feeling stupid and out of depth and entirely lacking a weird alter-ego of his own. Maybe they’d make one when he got there? Maybe they all roleplayed idealised stereotypes of themselves at the Kryten complex? Perhaps that was how Tracey was so chipper - she was neck-deep in larping a chipmunk, or something.

Thankfully, he was not particularly required to converse; Rimmer and Tracey somehow kept up a back-and-forth as if they’d known each other for years as she led them out of the concourse and towards her waiting car. Rimmer, predictably, cooed over the merits of whatever kind of Jaguar it was (a E-type? A G-type? Or maybe he’d F’ed that up, who knew) as they stowed their luggage in the boot and settled themselves in.

The sun was just starting to blush the Toronto streets with pale pink morning light as they slipped through. Lister tried very hard to stay awake, soak in his first look at another country - but ultimately he succumbed to the smooth hum of the engine and the gentle chatter of his companions and fell into a deep and undignified sleep against the window of the car.

He awoke only when the car stopped, jolted awake. Wiping the drool off his face on the sleeve of his jacket, Lister levered himself upright to get a better view at the gorgeous building they’d pulled up in front of.

Not having the architectural vocabulary to describe it, he could only look at the sweeping lines of glass and brick and steel as a marvel, like an alien spaceship from three million years in the future had landed in the middle of the Canadian landscape. He couldn’t quite comprehend it, but he knew it was beautiful.

He was jolted out of his reverie by Tracey opening the door, nearly causing him to fall forward out of the car in a very undignified manner, but his seatbelt kept him from mushing his face on the tarmac. She tipped a wink at him, probably well-used to this reaction, and said proudly, “Welcome to Nova 5!”

Rimmer was already standing off to the side with his luggage, tapping his foot as Lister clambered out and retrieved his own bags. Once he’d shrugged on his backpack and hefted his guitar case, the three headed in, led by Tracey who was practically skipping ahead, fizzing with energy. Just before the doors, Lister turned to look over his shoulder at the road sloping away from them, at the sea rolling in the distance, the sun painting everything brand-new in morning light. He understood why Kryten had put his artist’s complex here.

“Hurry up, Listy, there’s a goose feather pillow with my name on it,” Rimmer called from ahead, and Lister tore himself away from the view to join them.

The lobby was unlike anything Lister had seen before - huge, floating above them, full of light and crystal and plants cascading down in waterfalls of green. His exhausted eyes could barely comprehend the scale of it all. Somehow, Rimmer was managing to just ignore it all and walk straight ahead to greet a man in a gingham robe, nightcap and fluffy slippers, and as Lister trotted after him he realised who this must be.

“Kryters!” Rimmer called out warmly in the deepened tones of his alter-ego, and the berobed man smiled brightly back and returned the greeting just as warmly.

“Ace, Mr. Rimmer, sir! Good to have you back! This must be Mr. Lister?” He peered around Rimmer to smile kindly at Lister, who raised a tired hand in greetings and tried to look charming and poet-y.

“Nice to meet ya, Mr. Ryten.”

“Oh, please, sir, just call me Kryten, everybody does.”

“Alright, well - you don’t need to call me sir, y’know.”

“Oh, no, no, I insist, sir - I was in the service industry for a very long time, old habits die hard, and I am but a humble benefactor of the arts. Everyone here is far more deserving of respect than I.” Lister decided then and there that Kryten was a little odd, but he was nice, and that they were probably going to get along.

“Far be it from me to get in the way of introductions, Kryters, but I’ll probably faint right here and now if I don’t get to a bed in the next sixty seconds or so.”

“Oh, of course! Please, there’s plenty of time for this later. Rest up, sirs, and I’ll see you for breakfast, or lunch, or whatever’s convenient.”

“Cheers, man,” Lister waved goodbye to Kryten and Tracey and followed Rimmer through a maze of corridors, stumbling past huge wall-length tapestries and murals and rows of statues, each hallway another gallery. Rimmer didn’t spare any of it a second glance, only stopping when they reached a certain door in the bowels of the complex. He pressed his palm to a panel on the left and the door clicked and smoothly opened inwards, and Rimmer pressed ahead, Lister trailing in behind.

He barely had time to take in any of the sumptuous apartment before Rimmer was roughly relieving him of his bags, Ace persona vanished, and pointing him in the direction of the couch - “I forgot to ask Tracey where you were staying and it’s good enough, let’s sort it later” - and disappeared into the bedroom. Lister shrugged, shucked off his jacket and boots, and passed out on the couch.

When he woke up, disorientated but refreshed, Rimmer’s bedroom door was still closed. He sat up, properly appreciating the plush velvet of the couch beneath him. Not really knowing what else to do, he decided to be nosy.

The room was modern - as everything else was - light, airy, minimalist. It didn’t feel like Rimmer, really. It felt like a borrowed place. Lister supposed that’s what it was. When he looked closer; at the military volumes tucked in the corner of the bookcase next to the coffee table books about the old masters, when he found a stash of newspaper clippings he’d actually earned mixed with the old ones he used to squirrel away about completely unrelated Arnies and Rimmers from elsewhere, when he saw the neat way the familiar cups in his little kitchenette were still stacked; it began to seem more plausible that he lived here.

Realising that he felt pretty gross, Lister found his way to the shower and made good use of it. Much like everything else here, it was by far the nicest shower he’d ever experienced. He got changed into some fresh-ish clothes from his backpack, then, still alone in the front room, figured he’d grab a drink. He found some instant cocoa and a kettle and set it to boil, spilling the powder and leaving the wet spoon on the counter because he knew Rimmer would hate it, feeling some sense of normalcy and control in doing so.

Then, for lack of anything better to do, he padded over to the wall-spanning window and sat by it, gazing out at the snow fluttering gently down towards the manicured lawns of the landscaped gardens sloping endlessly away into foggy oblivion.

When Rimmer surfaced, padding around and tutting at the abandoned spoon softly in the background, Lister’s half-drunk mug of cocoa cradled in his hands had nearly gone cold, and his eyes were dry and sore from staring, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look away.

This was suddenly made easier by the unexpected presence of a soft woolen blanket dumped unceremoniously on his head. After a brief and undignified period of squawking and squirming, he managed to shake the offending object off and looked up into the smirking face of Arnold Rimmer.

“It’s not going anywhere, you know,” he said, taking a seat next to Lister. He was dressed in a soft cashmere jumper in a dark navy blue that clung to him flatteringly, and pale cream chinos, hair still slightly rumpled from sleep. Lister realised he was staring a little and looked away.

“S’been a while since I saw snow,” he mumbled as an excuse, still in the process of returning to reality.

Rimmer huffed out a laugh. “Don’t worry; there’s plenty here. You’ll get very used to it soon, I’ll say.”

“Mm. Funny what you can get used to, I guess.”

Lister drained his cold cocoa and set the mug aside before properly arranging the blanket over himself, then lifted one edge up invitingly. Rimmer paused for only the briefest of moments before sitting down beside him and tucking the offered corner around his shoulders.

They sat, side by side, not quite close enough to touch; but with the weight and warmth of the blanket, they felt very close indeed.

“Nicer than before, this,” said Lister, casting a small, knowing smile Rimmer’s way.

“Hm?” was Rimmer’s slightly startled response; despite himself, he too had been getting lost in the view.

“The blanket, bozo; made from actual wool and not recycled sandpaper, like our old one.”

“Oh. Yes. What did you do with that thing, anyway?”

“Burned it.”

“You didn’t!”

“I didn’t mean to! But the heating went out the last week I was there, so I ‘ad it wrapped round me permanently to keep warm, and it turns out whatever it was made from didn’t get on well with the gas hob.”

Rimmer turned towards him, aghast. “You… You… Set fire to the place?”

“Just a bit. Not much, though. Got it under control.”

“That’s awful. Such careless endangerment of property. I hope you lost the deposit.”

“Oi! Sod the deposit, what about me?” Lister protested, elbowing him gently for effect.

Rimmer sniffed. “I can already tell you’re fine, or you wouldn't be here under my far superior woolly blanket.”

“Cheers, mate.”

“You’re most welcome.”

It felt familiar, routine; bickering like this. But there was no real heat to anything. It just felt like a comfortable habit, a practised dance, a back-and-forth as natural as breathing.

The snow continued to tumble down, and they continued to watch it, side by side, companionably silent. Lister’s eyes drifted sideways, surreptitiously sizing up the man beside him. It still barely felt real, being here, with Rimmer. It would never be quite like it was before, but - right now? It was good. It was great.

He shuffled over just a tad and carefully leaned his head on Rimmer’s shoulder. He felt Rimmer tense under him, shoulders knotting themselves upwards, and he almost withdrew; but before he could, Rimmer actually relaxed, deliberately unwinding himself like a clockwork soldier spent of energy. Then, a miracle upon a miracle, Rimmer tentatively set his head on Lister’s.

Despite having been the one to nonchalantly initiate this mutual leaning, Lister was finding it quite hard to remember how to breathe normally, his awareness of his every action painfully heightened. If he was this teed up by it, he could only imagine how Rimmer must be doing. Still, he dared not move, lest the spell be broken.

Rimmer took a small accusatory sniff.

“You’ve been using my shampoo.”

“Yeah. Couldn’t get mine through security in a carry-on, remember?”

“I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy re-tying my shoelaces. Impossible to do a decent knot when half the commuting population of Northern Europe is jostling you with those infernal plastic trays,” Rimmer muttered, and Lister huffed a gentle laugh at his affected ire. “Bet it got confiscated for being half paint stripper. Can’t imagine anything less dealing with your amount of general grease.”

“Surely if either of us needs to use paint stripper it’s you, Monsieur Artiste,” Lister teased, nuzzling a little closer in rebuke. Rimmer grumbled a little but fell silent again.

They sat a little while longer, until Rimmer piped up again.

“Erm. Far from me being ungrateful for, this, um, situation, but. It’s not actually particularly comfortable.”

“Oh, thank smeg, I thought I was gonna have to break first,” Lister exclaimed, extracting himself from under Rimmer’s ear. He cracked his neck one way then the other with a very audible and somewhat unhealthy-sounding set of crunches. Rimmer winced, but stretched his own neck somewhat more delicately.

“Maybe we’re not really meant to fit together like that.”

“Nah, it’s always like that,” said Lister. “Just takes a bit of wriggling to find something actually comfortable, but I didn’t want to put you off.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Welcome,” Lister grinned. Rimmer smiled back, somewhat sheepishly.

“Sorry for making you sleep on the couch, by the way. Seemed easiest.”

“Oh, for sure. Like, I mean, I wasn’t expecting… It’d be a bit soon, right?”

“Wait, is this a bit too soon?” Rimmer asked, anxiously, flapping a corner of the blanket to make his point.

“Oh, erm, no? I mean. We’ll take it as it comes, right? We’ve got time.”

“Of course,” replied Rimmer quickly, though he didn’t seem much reassured, fidgeting in place. “Look, Listy… Just because you’re here, that doesn’t mean you have to…” He trailed off, chewing on his lower lip. Lister’s eyes followed the movement, and he licked his own lips subconsciously.

“Have to what, Rimmer?” He probed, gently.

“Just because we’re both here and talking to each other and it’s all hunky-dory, doesn’t mean we have to… Court, or anything.”

“Court?” Lister spluttered a laugh despite himself. “Who gave you a lift from the 18th century?”

“Oh, shut up,” Rimmer huffed, and Lister could swear he was pouting a little. Unexpectedly, Lister found himself struck with the thought that Rimmer was being cute. Impossible. The man with an alphabetised sock drawer? Cute?

“Can I do something stupid?” Lister asked suddenly, very aware that this probably was very stupid and he just got here and they were just patching things up, but -

“Erm? Well, erm, without knowing, I-” Rimmer’s eyes widened as he saw Lister lean closer, and his objections spluttered to a halt, and, like the stupid romantic idiot he was, actually closed his eyes, and Lister leaned closer, closer, until their lips met in the middle.

It was a brief, fleeting kiss, light and soft, and Lister pulled back after just moments. Rimmer followed him, eyes still closed, but stopped and opened them questioningly as he felt Lister’s full retreat.

“What? You’re just going to - what?” He frowned, irritated. “You’re right, if that’s all you’re going to do, that was stupid.”

Lister just grinned, and dove back in full-force, kissing him in earnest. He cupped a hand round Rimmer’s cheek to steady him there, drinking in the rough of unshaved stubble on his cheek, the little sounds Rimmer made as he nipped at his lips, the way Rimmer pushed back eagerly into the embrace. Eventually, he pulled back, then darted back in for one last peck, smiling into it, then they sat back to look at each other, flushed.

“Well.” Said Rimmer, because he was physically incapable of shutting up. “That probably was stupid.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Lister agreed, but he couldn’t find it in himself to sound at all apologetic, and he wasn’t.

“So, does this mean..?”

“It doesn’t have to mean any more than that, Rimmer,” Lister replied, but at Rimmer’s crestfallen reaction, hastily added, “But, uh, it can. I mean. Listen - it’s only been a couple of weeks, actually, right? But I’m here. And you’re here. I’m not saying I’m not going to get scared or not going to fuck up ever again, because, well, those would be stupid promises to make, but… I want to try, Rimmer. Arn. Ace. Whatever you want.”

Rimmer, looking slightly dizzy, merely nodded. “Whatever you want,” He echoed, faintly, then shook a little more sense into himself. “But you’re not walking over me like last time, alright?”

“Believe me, that’s the last thing I want. Last time was bad enough.”

Rimmer frowned a little more, then, with a concerted effort, let his expression change into something more resembling a smile.

“Well, then, let’s… Breakfast? Lunch? Whatever, I’m starving,” He got to his feet, ever a man of action when he’d made up his mind, shrugging off the blanket and offering Lister a hand up. Lister took it, noting with interest how Rimmer seemed surprisingly strong as he hefted him up and figured all the super-artists here must work out, or something. He then wondered if he’d have to work out, too, or if he could just enjoy the results, and then was pointedly cut off from thinking any more about it by Rimmer clearing his throat loudly from besides the door.

He smiled, and headed over to join him. There’d be plenty of time to find out later.

Maybe Dave Lister was three and a half thousand miles away from anything he’d ever known, but right now, in this moment - he knew he was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all, folks! ...For now? For now. I feel like there's more to tell, but - I also feel like the story could be drawn to a close here, so I'm going to tentatively say it's complete, and if I want to add more, it can be a bonus. There's a few scenes I want to add to the companion fic (The Lovers Are Losing), so it's not goodbye forever from this AU just yet. However, I have other projects I've been neglecting, so it is a small goodnight for now. I hope you'll come back whenever there's more! Thank you for reading, and for all of the lovely comments! The Red Dwarf fandom is a very warm and lovely place and I'm so happy to be here. <3
> 
> So, for now: see you all at Holly Hop! Or, well, even if I don't see you... You might see me! I don't know if it's a great idea to out myself like this, but, well, I hear that the poor sap gurning away as Kryten has a fondness for Keane, and the British seaside, and fics about bad choices and pining... ;) 
> 
> While I'm outing myself - come say hi on Twitter if you're so inclined! I'm @lapsansou and I have a million hobbies and am a mess but! You're very welcome to come befriend me over there, if you'd like.
> 
> Thank you all!! Stay safe & be well out there! May we all be able to go visit a little café by the seaside sometime soon...


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